[原创] Hard to be king under Bismarck垂拱为俾斯麦之君，难矣

showcraft

http://www.economist.com/node/18483247
Otto von Bismarck奥托·冯·俾斯麦
Hard to be king under Bismarck
垂拱为俾斯麦之君，难矣

A man of contradictions
一团矛盾之人
（译者注：林语堂曾言：“我只是一团矛盾而已，但是我以自我矛盾为乐。”）
Mar 31st 2011 | from the print edition

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Despot (right) and monarch

Bismarck: A Life. By Jonathan Steinberg. Oxford University Press; 592 pages; $34.95 and £25. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
俾斯麦:传奇一生。乔纳森·斯坦伯格著。
IN THIS new biography of the creator of the modern unified German state, Jonathan Steinberg finds a great many contradictory things to say about his subject. Otto von Bismarck was “a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of Protestantism, who secularised schools and introduced civil divorce”. He was a brilliant writer yet his letters and his memoirs cannot be trusted because he started to tell lies to his mother at a young age and never stopped doing so. He was neurotic, vindictive and insensitive as well as charming, charismatic and full of warmth.
在这本现代统一德国缔造者的新传中，乔纳森·斯坦伯格发现了许多传主的矛盾之处。他认为奥托·冯·俾斯麦是“一位健壮如牛精力旺盛的忧郁症患者，一位可以轻辄弹泪的冷酷暴君，也是一位世俗化教会学校、引导民事离婚摆脱教会控制的新教主义极端形式的皈依者。”他从孩提时便开始向母亲撒谎并从未放弃这一传统，因而他的书信与回忆录并不可信，但他仍然是一位卓越的作家。他神经过敏，睚眦必报，麻木不仁，但同时也风度翩翩，魅力四射，满腔热血。
Mr Steinberg, a professor of modern European history at the University of Pennsylvania, is fascinated by Bismarck’s complex personality. He started writing about him because he wanted to understand how his hero led three wars and unified Germany without commanding a single soldier, without a big political party backing him, without any experience in government before his nomination as minister-president of Prussia in 1862 and without great oratorical skills.
斯坦伯格在宾夕法尼亚大学担任现代欧洲史的教授，被俾斯麦其人复杂的个性深深吸引。由于渴望了解这位他心中的英雄如何在没有指挥一兵一卒，没有大型政党支持，在1862年任命为普鲁士首相前没有一丝从政经验，同时也没有一张如簧巧舌的各种不利条件下引导了三次战争并最终统一德国，作者着手撰写了本书。
Bismarck became 19th-century Europe’s greatest statesman (alongside Napoleon) through the sheer force of his personality, assisted by his outstanding intelligence, gargantuan capacity for work and his quasi-symbiotic relationship with King William I of Prussia. His ambitions started early. John Motley, an American who was Bismarck’s roommate at Göttingen University, saw the will to dominate in his friend when he was only 18 years old. In an 1839 novel Motley thinly disguised him as Otto von Rabenmarck who tells the narrator, a new student at Göttingen: “I intend to lead my companions here, as I intend to lead them in after-life.”
凭借桀骜凶悍的个性，佐以出类拔萃的智慧，浩浩汤汤的工作能力以及与普鲁士国王威廉一世同舟共济的莫逆私交，俾斯麦成为了19世纪欧洲最伟大的政治家（与拿破仑比肩）。有志不在年高。俾斯麦在哥廷根大学的室友，美国人约翰·莫特利说他早在老友18岁时便看到了他身上这种支配欲。莫特利在1839年的一部小说中淡淡地将俾斯麦影射为奥托·冯·拉本马克，并借小说中该人物之口向主人公，一位哥廷根大学新生布道：“我计划领导这里的同伴们，也打算引导他们之后的生活。”

Bismarck was enormously powerful in his 26 years as Prussia’s political leader. But from the first he was dependent on the goodwill of his king. Indeed, if William had decided to fire him after the fiasco of a belligerent “blood and iron” speech that Bismarck delivered a few days after he was appointed minister-president, his career would have been at an end—and Germany would have probably become a federation of sovereign principalities.
在26岁那年，俾斯麦身为普鲁士的政治领袖获得了巨大的权势。但一开始他必须仰赖国王的提携。事实上，俾斯麦被任命为首相后数天发布了他那引起争议的“铁血”演说，收获如潮恶评，堪称惨败。如果此时威廉国王下定决心驱逐俾斯麦，那么后者的政治生涯将就此画上句号，而德意志也很有可能成为王权公国的联邦。
Though the king was unhappy about the speech, he steadfastly backed Bismarck and would do so in subsequent conflicts. Much to the dismay of Queen Augusta, the king’s wife, Bismarck had near-hypnotic powers over William. He manipulated him with temper tantrums, tears, hysterical outbursts and frequent threats of resignation. “It is hard to be king under Bismarck,” sighed the sovereign.
尽管国王并不喜欢这样的演讲，但他还是在当时及之后的纷争中坚定不移的支持了俾斯麦。令国王的妻子，奥古斯塔王后大为不悦的是俾斯麦的权势已经凌驾于其夫君之上了，后者几乎成了听任前者催眠的傀儡。俾斯麦靠着自己的暴怒脾气，潸然老泪，歇斯底里的使性子与三番两次的辞职威胁等手段支配国王于股掌间。“垂拱为俾斯麦之君，难矣。”国王曾如是感慨。
Mr Steinberg is at his best when describing the relationship between the royal family and Bismarck. He argues that Bismarck’s misogyny stemmed from his childhood when he found himself in a triangle between his cold, intelligent and ambitious mother, whom he disliked, and his weak, kindly father. He despised Queen Augusta, because she interfered in his relationship with the king, and Crown Princess Victoria, the eldest daughter of England’s Queen Victoria, because she inserted herself into his relationship with the crown prince.
斯坦伯格在描述俾斯麦与皇室的关系时笔力尤健。他认为俾斯麦对女人的厌恶来源于幼年时的亲身经历，当时他发现自己处于令他反感的冷淡、精明、野心勃勃的母亲以及他那懦弱、温和的父亲和自己构成的家庭三角关系中。他厌恶奥古斯塔王后，因为她干涉了他与国王的关系；他也厌恶英国维多利亚女王的长女维多利亚公主，因为她插手阻碍了自己与王子的关系。
These strong women played the role of evil enchantresses in Bismarck’s psyche, argues Mr Steinberg. They dominated their weak husbands and threatened Bismarck, who sensed conspiracies everywhere. Even in later years, he could not bear to be in the same room with Queen Augusta (by then an elderly lady) and dropped out of an official dinner at the last minute when he found out that he was seated next to her.
斯坦伯格认为这些强势的女人在俾斯麦的心灵深处扮演了邪恶女巫的角色。她们掌控了各自懦弱的夫君，威胁到了敏感多疑的俾斯麦。即便在晚年，俾斯麦还是无法忍受与奥古斯塔王后（彼时为一老妇）共处一室。他还在最后关头退出了一场官方晚宴，只因发现自己座位毗邻王后。
Bismarck left his successors an unstable structure. The haphazardly thrown-together constitution of Prussia, with a lower house elected by a three-class voting system and an ineffectual House of Lords, was unsuited for a country that had become a political and economic powerhouse within three decades. By the end of the 19th century Germany possessed heavy industry, advanced technology, thriving ports and harbours, a skilled labour force and an urban intellectual elite, as well as Europe’s strongest army. Germans tolerated their archaic government so long as the brilliant and despotic Bismarck was in charge. But the shaky construct fell apart after his death, as did the fragile Bismarckian balance of power in Europe.
俾斯麦留给继任者的局面并不稳定。三十年中，普鲁士已经跃变为一个政治与经济强国。然而普鲁士随意拼凑的议会由三级选举体系产生的下院和失效低效的上院组成，与国力难以相符。19世纪末，德国已经拥有了重工业、先进工艺技术、繁荣的海港、掌握熟练技能的劳工与城市知识精英群体，以及全欧洲最强大的军队。只要卓越与铁腕的俾斯麦还大权在握，德国人就能忍受他们食古不化的政府。然而一旦俾斯麦撒手人寰，整个本已摇摇欲坠的政府体系便因此分崩离析，连同俾斯麦时代欧洲强权之间脆弱的均衡也随之被打破。

showcraft

已被收入ECO优秀译文推荐
http://bbs.ecocn.org/article-839-1.html

自觉的梦游人

译文很精练，值得推荐。只是，似乎标题没有译出“Under”的意境。俾相之下难为君？不知道。只觉得“It is hard to be king under Bismarck”，原文比中文译句更抓住了这对君相的微妙关系。

showcraft

梦版批评恰中肯綮，ECO也有人提出类似看法，我则搪塞之标题字数有限，难以腾挪，汗颜。
http://www.ecocn.org/thread-46861-1-1.html
想了想，改为“垂拱为俾斯麦之君，难矣”，取垂拱无为而治的意思。