紐時賞析／哈姆雷特改編成歌劇 難或不難？

‘To Be or Not to Be’: Is It the Question or the Point?

哈姆雷特改編成歌劇 難或不難？

“Hamlet” is our culture’s supreme emblem of a great artist’s freedom to

create something radically new. Shakespeare found a way to represent

the inner life as it had never been represented before: the pressure

of compulsive, involuntary memories; the haunting presence of a dead

father; a son’s angst in the wake of his mother’s remarriage; the

suicidal thoughts of a young person forced to make impossible

choices in a corrupt world.

「哈姆雷特」是我們文化中一名偉大藝術家自由創造出嶄新事物的極致典範。莎士比亞發現一種以往不曾出現、表現內在人生的方式，強迫的壓力，非自願的記憶；已逝父親鬼魅般的存在，兒子發現母親再婚的苦惱，一個年輕人在腐敗世界中被迫作出令人無法忍受的選擇而產生自殺念頭。

The play, written in characteristically supple

iambic pentameter, has an unforgettable music

of its own, a set of rhythmic surprises sprung

in the opening spondee — “Who’s there?” — and

developed in a thousand different ways. It is

a music epitomized, even for those who have no

idea that “Hamlet” is composed in verse, by the

cadence of the most famous line in its most

famous soliloquy: “To be, or not to be: that

is the question.”

這齣戲劇以富有特色且柔和的五音步抑揚格寫成，擁有自成一格且難忘的音樂性，像是一開場迸出的揚揚格「誰在那邊？」發展出一千種不同方式，即是一組饒富韻律的驚喜。即使對不知道「哈姆雷特」是以韻文寫成的人而言，這也是一齣濃縮的音樂，從它最知名的獨白，也是最出名的台詞「生存，或是毀滅，這是值得深思的問題。」即可以發現其韻律。

Now imagine the challenge of trying to write an

opera based on this of all plays — as Brett

Dean has done with his “Hamlet.”

現在想像一下，以這些戲劇為基礎，嘗試寫一齣歌劇的挑戰，這正是布雷特．狄恩創作的「哈姆雷特」。

A handful of composers, most notably Ambroise

Thomas in the mid-19th century, ventured into

this territory, but none of them managed to

penetrate very far into its forbidding depths.

That is, until Dean wrote his adaptation, which

captures something of the authentic “Hamlet”

music — in all its strangeness, dissonance and

haunting beauty.

一群作曲家挑戰這個領域，其中最知名的是19世紀中期的安布魯瓦茲．托馬，然而無人能夠非常深入這個冷峻的深處。直到狄恩寫出他的改編版本，才捕捉到「哈姆雷特」某種真正的音樂性，所有怪異、不協調與令人難忘的美。

The opera’s gifted librettist Matthew Jocelyn

reweaves the text, an intervention apparent from

the opera’s first moments. Hamlet enters alone

and, half-singing, half-speaking, intones the

words “or not to be … or not to be … or not to

be.” The fragment from the celebrated Act III

soliloquy is followed in this opening aria by

fragments taken from his other soliloquies, along

with a line — “What ceremony else?” — lifted

from a different character, Laertes, who speaks

it in Act V, at Ophelia’s grave.

這齣歌劇由充滿才華的劇本作家馬修．喬瑟林重新爬梳台詞，從歌劇的開始時刻就明顯介入。哈姆雷特獨自出場，半吟唱半說話式的吟詠著「或是毀滅...或是毀滅...或是毀滅」，這個著名的第三幕獨白開場後，接著是由他其他獨白片段組成的詠歎調，伴隨著「還有什麼儀式」的台詞，由另一個不同角色雷爾提，於第五幕時在奧菲莉亞的墓旁說出。

When Hamlet asks the visiting players to give

him a passionate speech from their very best

play, they begin to sing “To be or not to be.”

And in Ophelia’s madness, she sings not her words

alone but words that Hamlet has spoken to her,

words that weigh like rocks dragging her down to

a muddy death. “The Hamlet Zone” is a place in

which words are broken up, transferred and shared,

and in which the voice of one character is woven

together, in both harmony and dissonance, with

that of another.

當哈姆雷特要求來訪的角色給他一段他們最棒演出中的激情台詞時，他們開始唱起「生存或是毀滅」。而在奧菲莉亞發瘋後，她唱的不只是自己的台詞，還有哈姆雷特曾對她說的話，那些重如岩石般將她拖往死亡泥淖的話語。「哈姆雷特區域」是一個場域，話語在此被拆解、轉移及分享，接著用一個角色的聲音，以和諧與不和諧，將之與另一股聲音編織在一起。

Such, after all, is the special power of opera.

總而言之，這就是歌劇的特殊力量。

文／Stephen Greenblatt 譯／莊蕙嘉

說文解字看新聞

【莊蕙嘉】

名列莎翁四大悲劇之首的《哈姆雷特》推出歌劇版。1980年代起開始成為文化研究顯學的「新歷史主義」（New Historicism）開山祖師，也是莎學權威的美國教授格林布萊特為文推介。惜受限於篇幅，紐時周報只能部分迻譯宏文，合先敘明。

文章標題借用全劇最有名的獨白（soliloquy），而且語帶雙關：Question是大哉問，Point也可當「問題」解釋，或是「要領」、「妙處」。Be常被理解為「存在」，歷來激發出眾多兼具文采與哲思的中文翻譯。但在中世紀，be另有「執行」、「完成」之意，就是do。哈姆雷特自言自語，反映其對於是否該動手為父王報仇猶豫不決，因為「弒君」可是攸關自己生死存亡的問題。

類似的詞句在現代流行音樂中也有蹤跡可循。披頭四樂團（The Beatles）名曲Let It Be，字面譯為「讓它去」，作者保羅麥卡尼（Paul McCartney）表示靈感來自夢到亡母，了解創作背景後，就知道歌名「順其自然」的真意了。