名人轶事：王尔德在美国

‘Wilde in America,’ by David M. Friedman

王尔德在美国

Chances are you’ll never have a conversation as scintillating as the one Oscar Wilde was overheard conducting at a gathering in San Francisco in 1882. At the time, the 27-year-old Irish upstart had yet to write any of the works that would earn his fame. Undercredentialed as Wilde then was, his verbal verve and outlandish dress (satin breeches, velvet jackets, black cape) had made him a sought-after dinner guest in London and prompted a 10-month American tour, where his brio met with an ecstatic reception. “It was a superb performance, a masterpiece of sparkling wit and gaiety,” wrote one audience member in an account of the event. “Never before, or since, have I heard anything that compared to it.” Who was Wilde’s lucky interlocutor? It was a dressmaker’s dummy: The man was, in essence, talking with himself.

1882年，有人碰巧听到奥斯卡·王尔德(Oscar Wilde)在旧金山的一次聚会上和人说话，如此妙趣横生的交谈，恐怕难得再有了。当时，这位27岁的爱尔兰后起之秀还未写出那些为他赢得声誉的作品，但已经凭着他充满活力的辞藻和华丽的衣着(丝缎长裤、天鹅绒外套、黑色斗篷)获得认可，令他在伦敦成为宴会上大受欢迎的宾客，并得到机会，在美国做为期10 个月的巡回宣传。他的生动气质令美国人心醉神迷。“这是精彩的表演，智慧与欢乐火星四溅的杰作，”一个听众描述他的谈话。“我之前从没听过能与之相媲美的东西，今后也不会再有。”而王尔德对面这位幸运的谈心对象又是谁呢——一个裁缝用的人体模型——他其实是在自言自语。

Wilde captivated an even unlikelier audience at the bottom of a mine shaft in Leadville, Colo., when he regaled a dozen silver miners with chat of Cellini and Renaissance metal working, then drank them under the table. By his own account, “I brilliantly performed, amidst unanimous applause.” Lest you underestimate the dramatist’s (self-dramatist’s?) powers, keep in mind that Wilde also won over Walt Whitman, who invited him to his Camden, N.J., home for elderberry wine. Whitman approved Wilde’s mission of bringing the British aesthetic movement to the Yanks. “You are young and ardent,” Whitman told him. “The field is wide, and if you want my advice,” he added, “go ahead.” Wilde didn’t need to be told twice.

在科罗拉多州里德维尔的矿井深处，王尔德还迷倒了另一群更加不可思议的听众，他在井底款待十几个银矿矿工，与他们大谈塞里尼和文艺复兴金属制品，然后钻到桌子底下和他们开怀畅饮。用他自己的话说：“我做了精彩的表演，获得全体一致的掌声。”为免你低估了这位剧作家(抑或自编自演的剧作家?)的实力，别忘了，连沃尔特·惠特曼(Walt Whitman)也为王尔德所倾倒。他邀请王尔德来到他在新泽西州卡姆登的家中喝接骨木果酒。惠特曼认可了王尔德把英国美学运动带到美国的使命。“你年轻热忱，”惠特曼对他说，“你面前一片广阔，如果你还需要我的建议的话，”他补充道，“那就是，继续向前吧。”王尔德当然用不着再多说就能领会。

Without Wilde’s aptitude for self-­promotion, there might have been no Andy Warhol, no Paris Hilton, no Kim Kardashian. In his new biography of the Irish playwright, novelist and provocateur, “Wilde in America,” the journalist and cultural historian David M. Friedman argues that Wilde was among the very first to realize that celebrity could come before accomplishment. “Fame would launch Wilde’s career,” Friedman explains, “not cap it.” Wilde’s choice of America as his rocket platform was serendipitous, but in hindsight it seems prescient; our country’s revved-up reporters furnished Wilde’s jet pack. “No one before Wilde had used the press so skillfully to establish a claim to renown,” Friedman argues, ably proving his point by following his subject from ­interview to interview, state to state, charting the shrewd steps Wilde took to build his brand, “devising a formula for creating fame that other modern celebrities — all of them far more shallow than he — are using today, whether they know it or not.”

没有王尔德那种自我推广的天分，可能就不会有后来的安迪·沃霍尔(Andy Warhol)、帕丽斯·希尔顿(Paris Hilton)和金·卡戴珊(Kim Kardashian)。记者与文化史学家大卫·M·弗里德曼(David M. Friedman)的新著《王尔德在美国》(Wilde in America)是关于这位爱尔兰剧作家、小说家与煽动家的传记。弗里德曼在书中提出，王尔德是最早意识到名声是可以先于成就到来的人。“是名声令王尔德的事业起飞，而不是限制它，”弗里德曼解释。王尔德选择美国作为自己一飞冲天的平台纯属偶然，但事后看来却颇具先见之明;美国这些狂热的记者们为王尔德准备了喷气背包。“在王尔德之前，没有人能如此娴熟地利用媒体去建立自己的声望，”弗里德曼说，他追随笔下主人公的足迹，从一个采访到另一个采访、从一个州到下一个州，追溯王尔德为打造自己的品牌所采取的狡黠步骤，从而巧妙地证实自己的结论。“他发明了一种创造名声的公式，直到今日，那些名人们还在自觉或不自觉地使用着它，而他们都比王尔德肤浅多了。”

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 to Dr. William Wilde, a rakish eye doctor and folklorist, and his “extravagantly extroverted” wife, the poet and saloniste Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee. Lady Wilde gave weekly soirees at the family’s Dublin home, where her young son absorbed the raconteur’s art. “It was from Lady Wilde that Oscar learned that identity is a kind of fiction,” Friedman writes, “and that being oneself is a form of playacting.” Wilde carried that lesson to Oxford, where he swiftly created a new role for himself, losing his Irish accent, buying new clothes and polishing his aphorisms. His aim, Friedman explains, was not merely to “become the self-anointed leader of Oxford’s student aesthetes, preaching to his classmates the Divine Gospel of Beauty.” “Somehow or other I’ll be famous,” he said, “and if not famous, I’ll be notorious.”

奥斯卡·芬格尔·奥夫拉赫蒂·威尔斯·王尔德(Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde)于1854年出生于都柏林，父亲威廉·王尔德医生(Dr. William Wilde)是一位纵情酒色的眼科医生和民俗学研究者，母亲简·弗兰西斯卡·艾格尼丝·埃尔吉(Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee)是个“社交无度”的诗人和沙龙女主人。王尔德夫人每星期都在都柏林家中主办黄昏聚会，她的小儿子便沉浸在轶闻趣谈的艺术之中。“奥斯卡从王尔德夫人那里学到，身份也是一种虚构，”弗里德曼写道，“而‘做自己’也是一种演戏。”王尔德带着他学到的东西来到牛津，很快为自己创造出一个新角色，他抛弃了爱尔兰口音，买来新衣服，精心打造警句。弗里德曼说，他的目标不仅仅是“成为牛津学生审美学家中自我神圣化的领袖，向同学们传播美的福音书。”王尔德还说，“不管怎样我都会出名的，不是流芳千古，就是遗臭万年。”

He would achieve both goals nearly simultaneously, in 1895, when he was put on trial for “gross indecency” (the words his era conferred upon the “crime” of homosexuality) six weeks after the premiere of his play “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Wilde would serve two years in prison and die soon after, at the age of 46. But on his American trip, there were no augurs of this unbeautiful denouement, only six-foot-high placards bruiting his name. The signs were in poor taste, he wrote to a friend, but “anything is better than virtuous obscurity.”

这两个目标几乎是在同时达成，1895年，他因为“严重猥亵”的罪名(这个词在他那个年代是指‘同性恋罪’)接受审判，被判入狱六个星期，此时他的剧本《认真的重要性》(The Importance of Being Earnest)刚刚开始公演。后来王尔德在狱中度过了两年时光，出狱不久就与世长辞，享年46岁。但在他出访美国时，没有人能预见这丑陋的结局，只有六英尺高的海报上印着他的大名。他给朋友写信说，这张海报品味不佳，但是“再怎样也比默默无闻要强”。

About the only thing of note Wilde had accomplished in London before boarding the ocean liner that took him to New York — apart from dropping bons mots at parties, wearing a coat that looked like a cello to an art opening and hosting an occult séance attended by the Prince of Wales — was to incur the mockery of the popular musical librettist W. S. Gilbert, who was so exasperated by the peacocking ways of Wilde and his ilk that he wrote an operetta satirizing the aesthetic movement. Called “Patience,” it starred a “grandiose boob” named Bunthorne who was given to “dandyish dishonesty and nattering narcissism.” When “Patience” hopped the Atlantic to Broadway, Gilbert and Sullivan’s producer, Richard D’Oyly Carte, feared New Yorkers weren’t getting the joke. To fix the problem, he persuaded Wilde to travel to America and give talks on his decorative philosophy, clad in Bunthorne get-up. D’Oyly Carte’s office sold Wilde to promoters as a humbugging figure of fun, but Wilde got the last laugh. His tour earned him a small fortune; and he garnered more American press coverage in 1882 than any other Briton, including Queen Victoria.

除了在派对上妙语如珠、在某次艺术展开幕式上穿得活像一把大提琴、主持过一场神秘降神会(威尔士王子也出席了)，王尔德登船赶赴纽约之前，在伦敦取得的真正成就只有一个剧本，而且还招来了流行音乐剧作家W·S·吉尔伯特(W.S. Gilbert)的嘲笑。吉尔伯特早就厌恶王尔德的花枝招展，以及他在这部讽刺美学运动的轻歌剧里写的那种和他很相似的人。这个歌剧名叫《耐心》 (Patience)，主角是个“浮夸的傻瓜”，名叫班瑟尼，他总是沉浸在“虚饰的欺骗与啰嗦的自恋”之中。当《耐心》越过大西洋，在百老汇登场后，吉尔伯特与苏利文的制作人理查德·多伊利·卡特(Richard D’Oyly Carte)担心纽约人看不懂笑点。为了解决这个问题，他说服王尔德到美国来举办演讲，讲述他的装饰性哲学，再为它披上一层班瑟尼的外衣。多伊利·卡特的公司把王尔德当做一个满口花言巧语的好玩人物推销给演讲承办者们，但王尔德笑到了最后。他的巡回演讲为他赢得了一小笔财富，1882年，他成了被美国媒体报道最多的英国人，甚至超过了维多利亚女王。

If Wilde had left his public relations fate to D’Oyly Carte’s handlers, he might have bombed in Boston and quipped no more. Instead, he stewarded his own reputation, using his eloquent éclat and letters of introduction to gain access to the drawing rooms of America’s best-connected writers, scholars, salonistes and politicians, though he jawed just as jauntily with farmers, miners and cowboys. In his first weeks in Manhattan, Wilde arranged to sit for a formal portrait with the photographer Napoleon Sarony, whose sultry images of the actress Sarah Bernhardt (one of Wilde’s many diva friends) had fanned the flames of her notoriety. At the time of Wilde’s visit, New Yorkers were obsessed with collecting 4-by-6 cardboard-backed celebrity portraits, the Pokémon cards of the fin de siècle. The image-conscious Wilde instantly saw the value of the trend: The right photograph would burnish his image and magnify his mystique. Bringing his own costumes to the shoot, he made sure his pose projected “intelligence, poetic sensibility and the self-­possessed attitude of a young artist coming into his own.” The results of that photo session so beguiled the public (“Wilde’s face ‘went viral,’ ” Friedman writes) that unscrupulous merchants stole his visage to advertise cigars, stoves, freckle cures and bust-enhancing tonics.

如果王尔德继续让多伊利·卡特的经纪人打理他的公共关系，他或许就会在波士顿遭到惨败，再也说不出什么俏皮话了。相反，他开始自行经营自己的口碑，用他富于说服力的技巧与介绍信打开美国最有人脉的作家、学者、沙龙主人与政治家们的客厅大门，与此同时也不忘和农民、矿工与牛仔们谈笑风生。王尔德来到曼哈顿后，很快就安排了一次正式的照相，摄影师是拿破仑·萨罗尼(Napoleon Sarony)，他曾为女演员莎拉·贝纳尔(Sara Bernardt)照了一组非常性感的照片，令她艳名四播(贝纳尔也是王尔德的众多歌剧女星密友之一)。王尔德访美时，纽约人正流行收集4x6英寸硬纸衬底的名人照片，相当于19世纪末的神奇宝贝(Pokémon)卡片。王尔德格外注重形象，他马上就意识到这股潮流的价值：好的照片可以提升他的形象，进一步增强他的神秘感。他带着自己的服装来到摄影棚，确保自己的姿态可以反映出“一个获得认可的青年艺术家的智力、诗意敏感与镇静自若的风度”。其成果是一组令公众为之心醉神迷的照片(“王尔德的面孔‘以病毒级传播’，”弗里德曼写道)，不择手段的商人们盗用他的形象，用在香烟、火炉、除雀斑剂和丰胸药水广告上。

The Sarony close-ups weren’t the only shots Wilde stage-­managed. The scores of reporters who followed him on tour found the same set dressing in every hotel room he occupied: lilies and sunflowers perching among teacups, party invitations and ­leather-bound books; animal skins tossed over a sofa. Upon entering, they would behold the main attraction — the pallid, 6-foot-3 orator himself — languidly lounging with a book of poetry, dressed in cloak, satin breeches and velvet slippers, primed for beauteous disquisition. Journalists who reviewed his public performances, expecting them to be fatuous, often found themselves enthralled by Wilde’s rhetorical flights. A reporter from The San Antonio Express, impressed by Wilde’s call for “inculcating in the minds of our rising youth a love of the beautiful,” wrote that he had wanted to mock the “much talked of and extensively advertised” speaker but couldn’t. “We can recall nothing to ridicule, even though we were so disposed,” he admitted. Wilde himself was surprised when he noticed that he was being taken “seriously.” In a letter to James Whistler bewailing his earnest interviewers, he asked, with plaintive self-parody, “What would you do if it happened to you?”

萨罗尼的特写照片并不是王尔德唯一的舞台手段。大约有20多个记者跟随报道他的巡回演讲，他们发现他在各处下榻的酒店房间都采取同样的布置：茶杯、派对邀请函和皮面书籍旁边放着百合花与向日葵，沙发上搭着动物皮草。一进门，他们的目光就被面前出现的人所吸引——正是这位面色苍白，身高6英尺3英寸的演说家本人，他身穿长袍，丝缎长裤和天鹅绒拖鞋，疲惫懒散地坐在那儿，手里拿着一本诗集，正等着发表美丽动人的演讲。写评论的记者们本来觉得他的公共演讲可能会很愚蠢，结果往往是被王尔德华丽的言辞迷住。王尔德呼吁“要把对美的热爱灌输进新一代年轻人的心田”，一位《圣安东尼奥快报》(The San Antonio Express)的记者深受打动，他写道，自己本希望嘲笑这位“经常被人提起，而且广受宣传”的演讲者，结果却做不到。“我们回想不起任何值得嘲笑的东西，尽管我们非常想这样做，”他承认道。而王尔德本人发现自己被“严肃地对待”时，感到很惊讶。在一封致詹姆斯·惠斯勒(James Whistler)的信中，他为这些热情的采访者们感到悲哀，他带着忧伤的自嘲问到“如果这种事发生在你身上，你又当如何?”