参考译文：

弗兰纳里.奥康纳(1925-1964)

她向我们讲述生活在美国南方小镇上的人的故事

今天，我们向你讲述作家弗兰纳里.奥康纳的故事。

在她生命的后期，有人问这位美国作家弗兰纳里.奥康纳为什么要写作，她说：“因为我擅长写作。”她确实是一位优秀的作家。然而，她并不总是一位优秀的作家，她的写作水平的提高是因为她能够听取别人的意见，她修改她所写的故事，她重写这些故事，再修改，再重写，不断努力，从而提高了她的创作水平。弗兰纳里一直就希望成为一名作家，在她从乔治亚州立女子大学毕业后，她请求参加爱荷华州立大学的写作培训班。该校校长发现很难理解她的南方口音，他就要求她写出她想说的话，然后他要求看看她所写的几篇文章，他立即看到，她写的这些文章充满着想象，就像弗兰纳里.奥康纳自己一样，给人带来知识的光明。

玛丽.弗兰纳里.奥康纳于1925年出生在美国南方的乔治亚州萨凡纳市，就在她出生的这一年，她的父亲患上了一种罕见的疾病，这种疾病叫狼疮。她的父亲于1941年死于这种病。那时，她家住在乔治亚州的南方小镇--米尔德格威尔镇，这里的房子属于弗兰纳里的母亲所有。奥康纳最熟悉的莫过于美国南方小镇的生活，然而，她说：“如果你知道你是谁的话，你就能到任何地方去。”

米尔德格威尔镇的许多人认为她与其他的女孩子不一样，她对每一个人都很友好，但对于所发生的事，她似乎站在某人的一边，她似乎想更好地观察这件事。她的母亲就是她的榜样。她母亲说：“我从小就养成对每一个都很好，而且不要把我自己的事情告诉任何人。”弗兰纳里也不和别人谈论她自己。但在她的作品中，有一种看似平静和冷漠的愤怒从她那表面平静的小说中迸发出来。有些人把她看成是一位罗马天主教的作家，当她通过她的基督信仰来拯救她的灵魂时，他们看到了她的愤怒。有些人不否认她的罗马天主教的信仰，但他们注意到，她并不写什么事情，只是将事情的本来面目向人们呈现。

当她离开爱荷华州立大学的写作培训班时，她应邀参加了位于亚多作家群体中的一个写作小组。亚多位于纽约州萨拉托加温泉圣地，这里为一小批作家们进行短期创作而提供住房和活动场所。第二年，即1949年，她搬到了纽约市，她不久就离开了纽约市，而与她的朋友罗伯特.菲茨杰拉德及其家人一起居住在美国东北部的康涅狄格州。菲茨杰拉德说，奥康纳需要整天时间单独写作，而当她写完后，她又需要把她所写的讲给她的朋友听。

在她创作她的第一部小说< Wise Blood >(<智血>)时，她身受曾经夺去她父亲生命的那种疾病的折磨，这种疾病就是狼疮。由于治疗狼疮病，她的身体变得很虚弱。她搬回到乔治亚州，在米尔德格威尔镇的一个农场，她与她母亲一起度过了她的剩余时光。奥康纳仍然在写作、旅行和发表演讲。<智血> 发表于1952年，这部小说与奥康纳的第二部小说< The Violent Bear it Away>(<暴力夺魁>)一样都是讲述一位年轻人成长的故事。在这两部小说中，年轻人都不愿意接受最适合他们的工作。和弗兰纳里.奥康纳的所有作品一样，这部小说(<智血>)充满着幽默诙谐，即使是在她表达严肃意义时也是如此，这表明一个传统世界与一个现代世界的混合在一起，这也表明了奥康纳以她熟悉的乡村谈话方式简单明了地表达了她内心的思想斗争。

在<智血>中，有一位年轻人，他叫黑兹尔.莫特斯，他离开部队，去寻找他的家乡，那里已经空无一人，他逃到了一座城市，去寻找“一个可以居住的地方”。在火车上，他宣布他不相信耶稣基督，他说：“即使耶稣基督存在，即使他就在火车上，我也不会相信他。”他逃到城市只是为了逃离自然世界的一种尝试，他要成为某一样东西，一台机器。他确定，所有他所知道的都是他所触摸到的和他所看到的。然而，最后，他毁坏了他的视力，这样也许他就能够真正地看到了，因为他说在他有眼睛时，他就是一个盲人。评论家们说，他的行为似乎表明他不再愿意否认耶稣的存在，而且，现在他愿意在黑暗中追随耶稣。这部小说获得了评论家们很高的赞誉，不过，这部小说并没有得到广大读者的喜爱。

奥康纳的第二部小说<暴力夺魁>于1960年出版，和<智血>一样，这部小说也是有关一位年轻人学习如何处理生活的故事。这部书的开头是这样的：有一位年轻人，他叫弗朗西斯.马里恩.塔华特，他拒绝了他的祖父让他做的两件事，这两件事就是将他的祖父(已故)深深地掩埋在地下，然后把宗教传给他叔父的智残的孩子。塔华特没有这么做，相反，他把他祖父死在那的房子给烧毁了，又让他的叔父的智残孩子在一次宗教仪式上溺死了。

评论家们说，塔华特的暴力源于他试图通过否认宗教而找到真相的想法，然而，在最后，他接受了他曾经为之感动的深厚力量，这种力量就是上帝的旨意，而且，他必须接受上帝的旨意。奥康纳的两部小说都在探讨，一个年轻人在面对艰难地成长和安全的儿童世界之间所必须进行选择时所产生的漫长的心里恐惧的历程。

弗兰纳里.奥康纳的短篇小说至少与她的长篇小说一样有名。她的第一部短篇小说集< A Good Man is Hard to Find>(<好人难寻>)发表于1955年，在这部短篇小说集中，她涉及到她在写<智血>时的许多想法，如寻找耶稣基督等。在这部短篇小说集中有许多故事是有关人的精神世界与人的躯体世界之间的冲突。在< The Life You Save May Be Your Own>(<你所挽救的生命也许就是你自己>)故事中，有一位只有一只胳膊的工人正走向一个农场，他要求更多地关心他的精神世界，而不仅仅是物质。

拥有这个农场的妇女提议，让他娶她的聋子女儿。当这位母亲把这个农场给他，还把她的车也给，还给她17美元作为新婚旅行费用时，他最终同意了这门婚事。他说：“夫人，一个男人是由两部分组成的，即躯体和精神，…，夫人，躯体就像这所房子，它不会到任何地方去；而精神，就像一辆汽车，它总是在运动的，…。”他和这个聋子女孩结婚，他开车与她一起出去旅行。当他们停下来吃点东西时，这个男人离开了她的妻子，并开车来到了城市。在前往城市的路上，他停下来捎带了一个游荡的男孩。我们知道，这个只有一只胳膊的男人在他还是一个孩子的时候，他的母亲离开了他。评论家们说，当他在帮助这个男孩时，实际上他也就是在帮助他自己。

在1964年，奥康纳因胃病而动手术，这次手术一个的结果就是狼疮病又复发了，正是这种疾病夺走了他父亲的生命。在1964年8月3日，弗兰纳里.奥康纳去逝了，年仅三十九岁。临终前她说：“我是一位天主教教徒，而死亡一直就是我所想象中的兄弟。”

她去逝后第二年，即1965年，她的最后一部短篇小说集< Everything That Rises Must Converge>(<上升的一切必然汇合>或<水到渠成)发表了。在这部短篇小说集里，她谈到疾病的残酷和存在于父母与孩子之间的更为深刻的残酷。在这些短篇小说中，正在成长的孩子们处于与父母的抗争之中，他们既不爱父母也离不开父母。许多孩子觉得父母通过他们的爱来摧毁他们，他们恨他们的母亲，而对此孩子又感觉像了犯了罪似的。孩子们想猛烈地反抗，但他们又担心失去母亲的保护。在1971年，奥康纳的小说集出版了，这部小说集包括了她所写的绝大多数小说：包括她早期所收集的所有短篇小说，还包括那两部长篇小说的最初版本，那两部长篇小说当时是以短篇小说出版的，另外，这部书中还有她未完成的一部小说的一部分和一篇未出版的短篇小说。在1972年，这部新书获得了美国图书业的最高奖项，即国家图书奖。正如一位评论家所指出的那样，弗兰纳里.奥康纳的生命虽然不长，但她活得很深刻，她创作了优美的文章。

简评：

关于这位美国作家，我们所知很少，下面，我摘录一些她的言语，以便大家更好地了解这位作家。她曾经这样说：

就我的思想方法来说，唯一使我避免成为一个地区性作家的办法是当个天主教徒，而唯一使我避免成为一个天主教作家（狭义的）的办法是当个南方人。

我的读者是那些认为上帝已经死了的人，我很清楚自己正是为这些人而写作的。

对于这个世界，我只重视它与基督赎罪的关系。

对于耳背的人，你要大声疾呼；对于视力不清的人，你不得不画出大而惊人的人物。

此书（《智血》）是以激情写就的，如可能，也应怀着激情阅读它。这是一部关于一个基督徒的喜剧小说，故而是部严肃作品，因为任何的喜剧小说必须昭示生与死的内涵。

我发现但凡南方小说都被冠之以怪诞，而真正怪诞的小说却被说成现实主义的。

在我们懂事之前很久，我们的所见、所听、所闻和所触就对我们产生了影响。从我们刚刚能辨别声音起，南方就在我们心灵上烙上了印记。当我们能凭借想象写小说时，我们发现我们的感官已不可改变的要对一种特定的现实做出呼应。

我父亲12或15年前患的也是狼疮，但那时没有别的办法，只能等死；如今可服用可的松，所以我仍有足够的精力写作，而且除写作外我不需要做任何事，为此我可以藐视我的病，视它为一种福分。本来只能从远处观望的事，现在可近距离观察，反正我自己是这样认为的。

诙谐与可怕……可能是一块铜币的两个方面。根据我自己的经验，我写的所有滑稽的东西都是恐怖胜于滑稽，或因为恐怖才滑稽，乃至因为滑稽才恐怖。

事实是，我比任何人都喜爱这些小说（指短篇小说集《好人难寻》），反复地读，反复地笑，而当我记起我就是写它们的作者时又感到尴尬。

我觉得所有小说都是关于信仰改变的，关于人物的改变……关于对神的皈依改变了人。我写的全部故事都涉及这样的人物，他们很不情愿皈依上帝，但多数人都觉得这些小说冷酷、无望，甚至残暴。

我不能让我的人物在半途便停止发展，在长篇中至少不能这样。这无疑是天主教教育和天主教历史观使然——什么事物都要走向真实的终结或与其背离，一切都终将被拯救或丧失。南方的宗教是各自管各自的宗教，作为一名天主教徒，我觉得这种宗教痛苦、感人并滑稽地残酷。

我们多数人已学会对恶无动于衷，我们紧盯着恶的面貌，却常在上面发现我们咧嘴笑的反影，因而并不与其争论。而善就不同了，很少有人长久地盯着善的面孔，认清那上面也有荒诞，认清善在我们心中仍在构筑。恶的模式通常得到相应的表达。善的模式只是满足于一句陈词滥调的表述或是一句掩饰善的真实面目的词语。当我们看向善的面孔时，我们倾向于看到充满期望的玛丽·安式的面庞。

我因病一直哪儿也没去。从某种意义上说，得病比长途跋涉去欧洲更有教益，病中之人永远是孤独的，谁也不能随你而去。死前患病是再自然不过的事，我觉得没有患过病的人失去了上帝的一次恩典。

我们不讨论问题；只讲故事。

我尽管说有种种真实，有你的真实，也有别的谁的真实，但在这所有的真实的背后，只有唯一的一个真实，那就是基本没有真实这个事实。我和这个教会要说的是，在所有真实的背后根本没有真实！你本来在的那个场所已经消失，你想去的场所在那边已经不存在了，你现在的立足之地只要不离开那里就成不了好地方。人的所有地在哪里？什么地方也没有。外面的世界的任何地方都没有立足之地。

Flannery O’Connor, 1925-1964: She Told Stories About People Living in Small Towns in the American South 

Today, we tell about writer Flannery O’Connor.

Late in her life someone asked the American writer Flannery O’Connor why she wrote. She said, "Because I am good at it. "  She was good. Yet, she was not always as good a writer as she became. She improved because she listened to others. She changed her stories. She re-wrote them, then re-wrote them again, always working to improve what she was creating. Flannery had always wanted to be a writer. After she graduated from Georgia State College for women, she asked to be accepted at a writing program at the State University of Iowa. The head of the school found it difficult to understand her southern speech. He asked her to write what she wanted. Then he asked to see some examples of her work. He saw immediately that the writing was full of imagination and bright with knowledge, like Flannery O’Connor herself.  

Mary Flannery O’Connor was born March twenty-fifth, nineteen twenty-five, in the southern city of Savannah, Georgia. The year she was born, her father developed a rare disease called lupus. He died of the disease in nineteen forty-one. By that time the family was living in the small southern town of Milledgeville, Georgia, in a house owned by Flannery's mother. Life in a small town in the American South was what O’Connor knew best. Yet she said, "If you know who you are, you can go anywhere. "

Many people in the town of Milledgeville thought she was different from other girls. She was kind to everyone, but she seemed to stand to one side of what was happening, as if she wanted to see it better. Her mother was her example. Her mother said, "I was brought up to be nice to everyone and not to tell my business to anyone. "  Flannery also did not talk about herself. But in her writing a silent and distant anger explodes from the quiet surface of her stories. Some see her as a Roman Catholic religious writer. They see her anger as the search to save her moral being through her belief in Jesus Christ. Others do not deny her Roman Catholic religious beliefs. Yet they see her not writing about things, but presenting the things themselves.  

When she left the writing program at Iowa State University she was invited to join a group of writers at the Yaddo writers' colony. Yaddo is at Saratoga Springs in New York state. It provides a small group of writers with a home and a place to work for a short time. The following year, nineteen forty-nine, she moved to New York City. She soon left the city and lived with her friend Robert Fitzgerald and his family in the northeastern state of Connecticut. Fitzgerald says O’Connor needed to be alone to work during the day. And she needed her friends to talk to when her work was done.

While writing her first novel, “Wise Blood  she was stricken with the disease lupus that had killed her father. The treatment for lupus weakened her. She moved back to Georgia and lived the rest of her life with her mother on a farm outside Milledgeville. O’Connor was still able to write, travel, and give speeches. “Wise Blood  appeared in nineteen fifty-two. Both it and O’Connor's second novel, “The Violent Bear it Away, are about a young man growing up. In both books the young men are unwilling to accept the work they were most fit to do. Like all of Flannery O’Connor's writing, the book is filled with humor, even when her meaning is serious. It shows the mix of a traditional world with a modern world. It also shows a battle of ideas expressed in the simple, country talk that O’Connor knew very well.  

In “Wise Blood a young man, Hazel Motes, leaves the Army but finds his home town empty. He flees to a city, looking for "a place to be. On the train, he announces that he does not believe in Jesus Christ. He says, "I wouldn't even if he existed. Even if he was on this train. "  His moving to the city is an attempt to move away from the natural world and become a thing, a machine. He decides that all he can know is what he can touch and see. In the end, however, he destroys his physical sight so that he may truly see, because he says that when he had eyes he was blind. Critics say his action seems to show that he is no longer willing to deny the existence of Jesus but now is willing to follow him into the dark. The novel received high praise from critics. It did not become popular with the public, however.  

O’Connor's second novel, “The Violent Bear it Away, was published in nineteen sixty. Like “Wise Blood, it is a story about a young man learning to deal with life. The book opens with the young man, Francis Marion Tarwater, refusing to do the two things his grandfather had ordered him to do. These are to bury the old man deep in the ground, and to bring religion to his uncle's mentally sick child. Instead, Tarwater burns the house where his grandfather died and lets the mentally sick child drown during a religious ceremony.

Critics say Tarwater's violence comes from his attempt to find truth by denying religion. In the end, however, he accepts that he has been touched by a deeper force, the force of the word of God, and he must accept that word. Both of O’Connor's novels explore the long moment of fear when a young man must choose between the difficulties of growing up and the safe world of a child.

Flannery O’Connor is at least as well known for her stories as for her novels. Her first book of stories, “A Good Man is Hard to Find, appeared in nineteen fifty-five. In it she deals with many of the ideas she wrote about in “Wise Blood, such as the search for Jesus Christ. In many of the stories there is a conflict between the world of the spirit and the world of the body. In the story, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," a traveling workman with only one arm comes to a farm. He claims to be more concerned with things of the spirit than with objects.

The woman who owns the farm offers to let him marry her deaf daughter. He finally agrees when the mother gives him the farm, her car, and seventeen dollars for the wedding trip. He says, "Lady, a man is divided into two parts, body and spirit. . . The body, lady, is like a house: it don't go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile, always on the move. . . "  He marries the daughter and drives off with her. When they stop to eat, the man leaves her and drives off toward the city. On the way he stops and gives a ride to a wandering boy. We learn that when the one-armed man was a child, his mother left him. Critics say that when he helps the boy, he is helping himself.

In nineteen sixty-four, O’Connor was operated on for a stomach disease. One result of this operation was the return of lupus, the disease that killed her father. On August third, nineteen sixty-four, Flannery O’Connor died. She was thirty-nine years old. Near the end of her life she said, "I'm a born Catholic, and death has always been brother to my imagination. "

The next year, in nineteen sixty-five, her final collection of stories, “Everything That Rises Must Converge, appeared. In it she speaks of the cruelty of disease and the deeper cruelty that exists between parents and children. In these stories, grown children are in a struggle with parents they neither love nor leave. Many of the children feel guilty about hating the mothers who, the children feel, have destroyed them through love. The children want to rebel violently, but they fear losing their mothers' protection.  In nineteen seventy-one, O’Connor's “Collected Stories was published. The book contains most of what she wrote. It has all the stories of her earlier collections. It also has early versions of both novels that were first published as stories. And it has parts of an uncompleted novel and an unpublished story. In nineteen seventy-two this last book won the American book industry's highest prize, The National Book Award. As one critic noted, Flannery O’Connor did not live long, but she lived deeply, and wrote beautifully.

http://www.wwenglish.com/m07/voa/spec/2008/07/wwenglish.com_pia080706.mp3