[转帖] [Book] [2011.05.07]The devil and the deep blue sea魔鬼和深邃之海

showcraft

http://www.ecocn.org/thread-48642-1-2.html
The Mediterranean
地中海

The devil and the deep blue sea
魔鬼和深邃之海


History’s most important sea
历史上最重要的海域

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean.
无尽之海：地中海的人类文明史


      DAVID ABULAFIA’S marvellous history of the Mediterranean is an excellent corrective to oversimplified views of geopolitics. Some people home in on distinctive landmasses, an island such as Crete or a clear shape like Iberia or Anatolia, and assume these have long formed a single cultural or political space, embracing coast and interior, and different from places “across the water”. At the other extreme, romantic types regard a lake or sea as a friendly space where ideas, expertise and merchandise are traded to perpetual mutual advantage.
      The second view is the more likely. True, the various ports and shores of the Mediterranean influenced one another (if war is regarded as a form of influence), but the impact of hinterlands and of distant powers, like Russia and America, was also huge.
      剑桥大学地中海史专家戴维•拉斯坎姆教授卓著的史学专著，纠正了各种过于简化从特定地缘政治视角的地中海历史研究。一些研究人员或立足于某个特定的大陆地缘，或着眼于某个岛屿如克里特岛或者伊比利亚半岛、安纳托利亚，并认为这些地区形成了悠久的独特的文化、政治空间体，同时辐射周边地中海沿岸和内陆，誉之为“在整个地中海独一无二”。另一种偏颇的观点是过于浪漫化，把某一个水域说成和平圣地——在那里，各种文化理念、技术技艺和商品贸易互相流通、促进共同的繁荣发展，一片永恒祥和之光。
      比较而言，第二种观点更可信些。确实，整个地中海无数的港口、海岸互相影响（如果战争也可以看成另一种形式的互相影响），但欧、亚、非的大陆腹地和俄美这样的似乎遥不可及的大国，对本区域的影响力也是巨大的。

      Marshalling a vast array of intricate detail, Mr Abulafia takes the reader from the age of the Phoenicians and Trojans to the advent of modern tourism. He distinguishes epochs when the sea was kept safe by a single power—the Roman empire, the Royal Navy or the Sixth Fleet—from periods of intense strategic conflict and from times of free-for-all between small powers, slave-traders and pirates.
      In most phases of history, Mr Abulafia shows, the Mediterranean was a net exporter of economic and cultural might. In the Middle Ages, for example, city-states traded from a position of strength with north European suppliers of textiles and north African sellers of gold. They also established bases in the eastern Mediterranean, exploiting Byzantium’s decline, gaining access to merchandise from farther east. In the modern era the Suez Canal reduced the role of the sea to that of thoroughfare, between the Atlantic and Asia.
      从庞杂纠缠的无数史料细节中，拉斯坎姆教授梳理出清晰的脉络，带领读者穿越时光，从腓尼基和特洛伊时代，到现代旅游业的崛起。他区分了几种不同的时代——一方势力独霸海洋的年代，如：罗马帝国、英国皇家海军或美国第六舰队；战略冲突异常激烈时期；小国势力、奴隶贩子武装和海盗相互纷争的时期。
      但在历史的大多数时间里，地中海地区是经济文化的强势“输出国”。中世纪，这里的一些城邦国家（在今天意大利和西班牙境内）在北方纺织贸易、北非黄金贸易中都处于强势地位。他们还利用拜占庭帝国衰落的时机，在东地中海地区建立基地，参与远东商品贸易。进入现代社会，苏伊士运河的开通，陆运代替了海运，成为连接大西洋和亚洲的主角。
   
      Mr Abulafia enjoys using arcane detail to bolster his arguments. Explaining the rise of Barcelona as a naval power to rival Italian city-states like Pisa and Genoa, he notes the balanced diet of Catalan sailors: more biscuit and cheese than the Venetians, less wine than the Neapolitans, but plenty of garlic, onions and spices to make hard biscuits more palatable.
      Choosing his superlatives carefully, he concludes that the Mediterranean has been “the most vigorous place of interaction between different societies on the face of this planet”. Indeed, its role in the history of civilisation has “far surpassed [that of] any other expanse of sea”. But as the book makes clear, these interactions were not always mutually beneficial.
      拉斯坎姆教授喜欢运用不为人知的细节支持他的观点。在解释巴塞罗那战胜比萨、热那亚这些意大利城邦国家、获得海上霸权的原因时，拉斯坎姆教授归因于西班牙加泰罗尼亚水手们的营养均衡的饮食习惯：比威尼斯人吃更多的饼干和奶酪，不和那不勒斯人一样贪杯、爱吃大蒜、洋葱和各种香料，让硬邦邦的饼干更可口。
      拉斯坎姆教授很少使用最高级，但他得出了关于地中海的最高级结论——地球上不同社会相互影响最具活力的地区唯有地中海。确实，在世界文明史上，地中海的影响力大大超出了其他任何海域。但教授的专著也指出了，这些相互影响并不总是互惠互利的。

      The cargoes transported across the Mediterranean included terrified slaves and prisoners (like the apostle Paul, whose ship was smashed to pieces) as well as exotic spices. Voyages, whether military or commercial, were undertaken in a spirit of ruthless calculation, not open-hearted adventure. Despite the warm feelings it now evokes in north European hearts, as a locus of healthy food and blissful ecology, the Mediterranean is a perilous place for sailors. In winter, storms can brew up fast and rage for days. That is one reason why Mediterranean people who make their living from the sea do not share the romantic emotions of those who splash about for fun. Indeed before the age of tourism not many littoral folk learned to swim; the risk of drowning was too high.
       航行在地中海的货船除了运载异国香料，也会运送惊恐的奴隶和囚犯（比如，使徒保罗被抓捕后，运往罗马途中，船只被风暴打得粉碎）。不管军事和商业航行，都是出于利益算计，从来没有开阔视野的探险之行。在当今的北方人心目中，地中海唤起的是温暖和浪漫，那里是健康食品的原产地、那里是无忧无虑的生态旅游地。但对水手来说，是可能丧命的危险之海。冬季的风暴迅疾狂暴，连续数日。这就是靠地中海谋生的当地人，无法和海水中寻欢作乐的游客分享浪漫感受的原因。在旅游业兴起之前，没有多少沿岸的居民主动下海学习游泳，被淹死的几率太高了。

      Cross-fertilisation between cultures and religions did, of course, take place, often despite the efforts of secular and religious leaders to stop it, or to ensure that influence only flowed one way. In Tunis you can see the tomb of a Majorcan friar who studied Islam in Bologna and then moved to north Africa where he became a learned and distinguished Muslim.
      Mr Abulafia notes with approval that Sephardic Jews, such as his own forebears, forced to leave Spain for Ottoman Smyrna, have been especially open to integration with surrounding cultures. Whereas modern Judaism celebrates the Jewish revolt against the Hellenized dynasty that ruled the Levant, Mr Abulafia prefers to focus on Alexandria, where there was a more productive symbiosis between Hellene and Hebrew. Its fruits include a great Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures and Philo’s brilliant exposition of Jewish metaphysics—written in Greek.
      尽管世俗和宗教领袖常常想方设法阻止或拒绝外来影响，不同的文明和宗教的交融和相互影响在确确实实地发生。在突尼斯，一位西班牙东部马略卡的修道士的坟墓就是一个很好的例子，他在意大利博洛尼亚研究伊斯兰教，然后又去了北非，学习和皈依了伊斯兰教并成为著名的穆斯林。
      西班牙系的犹太人（拉斯坎姆教授自己的先祖就属于这个群体），曾经被迫离开西班牙，经奥斯曼帝国士买那地区当局批准，落户当地，他们融入了当地的文化习俗中。而一些现代犹太人庆祝犹太起义，排斥统治地中海东部高地黎凡特地区的希腊化统治。拉斯坎姆教授宁愿关注埃及的亚历山大城，这里融汇希腊文明和希伯伦文明，成果丰硕，像从希伯伦语《旧约圣经》翻译来的影响深远的希腊语旧约版本、希腊化时代的犹太学者斐洛对犹太哲学思想的阐述——这些典籍是靠希腊语传世的……

      Mr Abulafia is too conscientious a historian to speculate much about the future, or even to prejudge how the modern age will fit into the sweep of Mediterranean history. But using his analytical tools, it is surely possible to sketch out a rather dark outlook for the sea, thanks not just to the ebbing of European power but to avoidable crises of governance and demography. As things stood until recently, an unhealthy sort of system linked northern and southern Europe, with subsidies and tourist euros from the north helping to mask and preserve dysfunctional politics and sclerotic societies south of the Alps.
      拉斯坎姆教授是一位过于谨慎的历史学家，他没有对地中海地区的未来作出推测，甚至也没有提出一个愿景——当代的发展将如何在漫长的历史中找到自己应当的位置。但应用他的分析工具，我们还是可以勾勒出这个地区暗淡的前景，不只是欧洲影响力的衰落、还有不可避免的政治危机和民主体制的兴起。从目前情况来看，欧洲北部地区给予南部地区的财政补贴和流入的旅游业收益，导致了一种不健康的相互关系，掩盖和维持了阿尔卑斯以南地区混乱的政局和僵化的社会。

      An even less healthy dynamic connected Europe as a whole with north Africa: the European Union absorbed some of the Maghreb’s surplus labour, while helping to prop up the region’s authoritarian regimes. Both those political ecosystems are now collapsing, with the euro-zone crisis, the advent of Arab people power and the war in Libya. The crises present a challenge to both regions; the Maghreb needs to loosen political control and strengthen its institutions and Europe must support such moves, both politically and economically. Failing to seize the opportunity may result in the flow of desperate people northward becoming uncontrollable. That may not be so unusual when set against three millennia of conflict in the Med. The worst outcome would be for Europe and north Africa, both losing relative weight in the world, to reinforce one another’s decline. That would be a lamentable fate for the “Great Sea”, invoked in a Jewish prayer which gives this book its title.
     而欧洲作为一个整体和北非的关系更加不健康：欧盟吸收了北非马格利布地区的一些剩余劳动力，从而帮助维持了当地的专制政权。但随着欧元区危机、阿拉伯民主力量的兴起和利比亚战争，双方的政治生态系统已遭破坏，面临挑战——北非马格利布地区的国家需要放松高压统治，提升行政管理的效率。欧洲国家要从政治和经济两个方面推动改革。如果错失改革良机，绝望的北非人民可能汹涌而起，导致局势失去控制。在地中海三千年的历史发展中，此种情景并不是绝无仅有的。最坏的结局就是恶性循环，不管欧洲还是北非互相加剧对方的危机，从而双双在世界的势力格局中滑落。这对于诞生伟大文明的地中海是一个悲惨的命运，这也是本书作者——一个地中海犹太人后代，在他的书名中蕴含的深意和内心的祈愿。