《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 36 (77):意大利,這是怎樣一個國家大綱

"No town can live peacefully, whatever its laws," Plato wrote, "when its citizens . . . do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love."

“沒有哪個城鎮能過太平日子，無論制定什麼法律，”柏拉圖寫道，“假使市民……無所事事，只是享受美酒盛宴，因爲談情說愛而搞得自己筋疲力竭。”

But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?

可是偶爾過過這樣的生活有何不好？一生當中只花數個月的時間，除了找尋下一頓佳餚之外別無所求，難道罪無可赦？只是爲了取悅自己的聽覺而去學習一種語言，別無其他目的？或者正午時分在庭園的一方陽光中，坐在自己最愛的噴泉邊打盹？隔天再這麼做一次？真那麼難以原諒嗎？

Of course, one can't live like this forever. Real life and wars and traumas and mortality will interfere eventually. Here in Sicily with its dreadful poverty, real life is never far from anyone's mind. The Mafia has been the only successful business in Sicily for centuries (running the business of protecting citizens from itself), and it still keeps its hand down everybody's pants. Palermo—a city Goethe once claimed was possessed of an impossible-to-describe beauty—may now be the only city in Western Europe where you can still find yourself picking your steps through World War II rubble, just to give a sense of development here. The town has been systematically uglified beyond description by the hideous and unsafe apartment blocks the Mafia constructed in the 1980s as money-laundering operations. I asked one Sicilian if those buildings were made from cheap concrete and he said, "Oh, no—this is very expensive concrete. In each batch, there are a few bodies of people who were killed by the Mafia, and that costs money. But it does make the concrete stronger to be reinforced with all those bones and teeth."

當然，沒有人能夠永遠過這種日子。真實生活、戰爭、苦難、道德終將起而干預。在貧困的西西里，真實生活永遠走不出任何人的腦海。黑手黨是西西里數百年來唯一成功的事業（保護市民免受其害），而它的魔爪仍伸及每個人。巴勒莫（Palermo）——歌德曾稱之爲擁有無法形容之美的城市——或許是目前西歐唯一能讓你走在二戰瓦礫堆中感受發展狀況的城市。黑手黨在20世紀80年代爲洗錢操作而建造的醜陋不堪的公寓危樓，使這座城市有計劃地遭受不可名狀的醜化。我問一位西西里人，這些建築是否用廉價的混凝土建造而成，他說：“喔不——是很貴的混凝土。每一批混凝土都混有幾具遭黑手黨殺害的屍體，這可花錢咧。不過用骨頭、牙齒加固，的確讓混凝土比較堅固。”

In such an environment, is it maybe a little shallow to be thinking only about your next wonderful meal? Or is it perhaps the best you can do, given the harder realities? Luigi Barzini, in his 1964 masterwork The Italians (written when he'd finally grown tired of foreigners writing about Italy and either loving it or hating it too much) tried to set the record straight on his own culture. He tried to answer the question of why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have still never become a major world power. Why are they the planet's masters of verbal diplomacy, but still so inept at home government? Why are they so individually valiant, yet so collectively unsuccessful as an army? How can they be such shrewd merchants on the personal level, yet such inefficient capitalists as a nation?

在這種環境下思考下一頓佳餚，是否有些膚淺？或者，考慮到這般嚴峻的現實，你也只能這麼做，無從選擇？巴茲尼（Luigi Barzini）在1964年的大作《意大利人》（他之所以書寫此書，是因爲描述意大利的外國人對這個國家不是愛就是恨得要命，這些終於讓他感到厭倦）當中，嘗試明確記錄他的文化。他試圖回答幾個問題：關於意大利爲何出產最偉大的藝術家、政治家和科學家，卻仍未能成爲世界強國？他們爲什麼是外交辭令的佼佼者，卻仍拙於國內政治？他們爲什麼具有個人勇氣，組織軍隊卻集體潰敗？就個人而言，他們每個人都是精打細算的商人，爲什麼作爲一個國家的時候，就成了缺乏效率的資本主義國家？

His answers to these questions are more complex than I can fairly encapsulate here, but have much to do with a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent "opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors . . ." In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.

他給予這些問題的答案，比我在此所能引用的更爲複雜，而其和意大利長期以來地方官員的貪污以及外來統治者的剝削有很大的關係，這一切悲傷的歷史經驗，導致意大利人得出看來正確的結論：這世界上沒有任何人或任何事可讓人信賴。因爲世界如此腐敗、動盪、誇大、不公，你只能信賴自己的感官體驗，正因爲如此，意大利人的感官在歐洲首屈一指。巴茲尼說，因此意大利可以忍受庸碌無能的將軍、總統、暴君、教授、官僚、記者和工業大亨，卻永遠無法忍受無能的“歌劇演唱家、指揮家、芭蕾舞者、交際花、演員、電影導演、廚師、裁縫……”在一個混亂失序、災禍連連、充滿詐騙的世界，有時只能信賴美。唯有卓越的才藝不會腐敗。快樂無法降價求售。有時一頓飯是唯一真實的貨幣。