RADHIKA JONES2026年10月23日MUSIC AGAINST THE NIGHT, by Yiyun Li《抗衡黑夜的音乐》(MUSIC AGAINST THE NIGHT)，李翊云著Is it worse to come within grasping distance of a dream than never to have gotten close? In “Music Against the Night,” her new novel about the intertwined lives of two real-life classical musicians at the turn of the 19th century, Yiyun Li traces the arc of that dubious honor called minor fame. “All people are protagonists only in their own lives,” she writes. “Very few people are granted a line in a masterpiece or a footnote in history.” It’s success in a way, but only the kind you settle for.梦想已经触手可及但未能实现，是不是还不如从未接近过？在《抗衡黑夜的音乐》这部以19世纪之交两位真实古典音乐家交织的命运为主题的新作中，李翊云勾勒出那种被称为“小有名气”的可疑荣誉。她写道：“所有人唯有在自己的生活里才是主角。有极少数人能在杰作中留下一句台词，或在历史中成为一个脚注。”这在某种程度上固然算是一种成功，但也只是那种人们不得不妥协接受的成功。Certainly John Field, the composer and pianist born in Dublin in 1782, wants to be more than a footnote. His violinist father and organist grandfather call him a genius, and train him up to be the next Mozart. But as a prodigy, he’s always a few years behind Salzburg’s prize pupil. Belatedness hangs over him as a perpetual condition. He isn’t even the first John in his family. His older brother, of the same name, died before he was born.毫无疑问，1782年出生于都柏林的作曲家兼钢琴家约翰·菲尔德渴望获得的绝不仅仅是一个脚注。他的小提琴手父亲和管风琴手祖父称他为天才，将他往下一个莫扎特的方向培养。但作为神童，他跟萨尔茨堡的天之骄子相比总是滞后个几年。“迟滞”如同一道永久的阴影笼罩着他。他甚至不是家族里第一个叫约翰的人——在他出生前，同名的大哥就已经夭折了。His eventual wife and narrative counterpoint, Adelaide Percheron, known by the nickname Percherette, is an orphan. Born to a mixed-race mother and a French father in Pondicherry, the French colony on the southeast coast of India, she pursues music not as an accomplishment in the Jane Austen sense — a drawing-room pastime for refined ladies — but with secret passion, as a way to express herself beyond her disadvantaged state.他后来的妻子、与他形成鲜明对照的阿德莱德·佩什隆（昵称“佩什蕾特”）是一名孤儿。她出生于印度东南海岸的法国殖民地本地治里，母亲是混血儿，父亲是法国人。她追求音乐并非出于简·奥斯汀笔下那种才艺——即精美客厅里供优雅淑女消遣的玩物，而是怀揣着隐秘的热情，将其作为突破自身卑微境遇、倾听与表达自我的途径。As Li moves between their stories, similarities emerge. John and Percherette are outsiders on the European continent. Both shake off their pasts to advance their ambition. Music isolates them from their families, sometimes heartbreakingly; it motivates them, guides their movements and brings them inexorably toward each other.随着李翊云在两条故事线之间穿梭，相似之处显现出来。约翰和佩什蕾特都是欧洲大陆上的外来者。两人都试图挣脱过去以实现野心。音乐将他们与家庭隔离开来，过程有时令人心碎；音乐也驱动着他们，指引着他们的轨迹，并不可避免地将他们推向彼此。Keeping time is a natural theme for the novel, and Li bends it to her will, often flashing forward to reveal events in her characters’ futures. John’s maestro in London, Signor Clementi, waves off the concept of fate so as not to foreclose on possibility, but fate is built into the structure of “Music Against the Night.” The novel’s first sentence concerns John’s last words. Adelaide, receiving the news of her estranged husband’s death, wastes no time in broaching a frequent preoccupation of Li’s and of literature’s: “What did it signify, to be remembered? When a life ends, night falls. All the daybreaks hence belong to others. Men die, nearly always to be forgotten.” We are acutely aware throughout the novel of the gulf between what these characters desire and what tragedies, major and minor, await them.保持时间标度是这部小说天然的主题，李翊云对其运用自如，经常通过预叙揭示角色未来的命运。约翰在伦敦的导师克莱门蒂先生对命运这个概念充满不屑，认为那会断送可能性，但命运本身已被嵌入《抗》的结构之中。小说的第一句话谈的就是约翰的临终遗言。阿德莱德在收到分居丈夫的死讯时，毫不停留地触及了李翊云乃至整个文学界经常关注的核心议题：“被记住，究竟意味着什么？当生命终结，夜幕便已降临。此后所有的黎明都已属于他人。人死之后，几乎无一例外会被遗忘。”在整部小说中，我们能敏锐地察觉到这些角色所渴望的一切与等待着他们的悲剧（无论大小）之间存在着巨大鸿沟。That absence of chronological suspense keeps us firmly rooted in the moment. Li focuses on John’s and Percherette’s comings of age, vividly portraying the sensory and emotional experience of two young people forged in a crucible of precocity. The child John — small for his age, burdened with a stutter and shouldering his family’s expectations of greatness — cuts an especially vulnerable figure.由于没有按时间顺序的悬念延伸，我们得以紧紧扎根于当下。李翊云聚焦于约翰和佩什蕾特的成长历程，生动地呈现了两个在早熟熔炉中淬炼而出的年轻人的感官与情感体验。童年时期的约翰身材矮小、口吃，同时背负着家族对功成名就的期待，展现出一个格外脆弱的形象。It doesn’t help that as early as 7 he is treated to such truisms as, “What makes one musician different from another is not the notes he can play, but how to turn music into a commodity.” (In fairness, his grandfather has his best interests at heart.) Percherette learns charm and cynicism at the feet of her worldly-wise grandmother, Leonora, and adopts a protective shell so strong that it kept even this sympathetic reader at a distance, until a devastating loss cracks her open.更无奈的是，早在七岁时他就被迫接受了这样的至理名言：“区分音乐家的不是他能弹奏什么音符，而是如何将音乐转化为商品。”（公平地说，他的祖父确实是出于好意。）佩什蕾特在她精明世故的祖母莱奥诺拉身边学会了迎合与嘲讽，并披上了一层坚硬的外壳，以至于连抱有同情心的读者都被拒之门外，直到一场毁灭性的丧失才将她破开。 “Music Against the Night” dives freely into the discourse of art and commerce. In this novel, classical music is not a highbrow calling that floats above market forces; it’s a cutthroat vocation, governed by strategy, rivalry, scandal and survival.《抗》坦率地深入探讨了艺术与商业的议题。在这部小说中，古典音乐绝非凌驾于市场力量之上的高雅天职，而是一门极其残酷的职业，充斥着策略、竞争、丑闻与生存。Characters sound off on the virtue of originality (“When people dance, they don’t want to think. You must write music that feels familiar to them”); the balance between inspiration and ownership (John’s first composition owes a debt to Dublin’s chimney sweeps); the anxiety of influence (“If you want to be the next Mozart,” his father tells him, “you’ll have to be at least twice as good as he is. Why? Because all those positions on the ladder — you know the ladder I’m talking about — those rungs are occupied”); the importance of self-promotion (people “spend more to hear us because they’ve heard our names, and they hope it will reflect well on them”); and the technology of the instrument as a vehicle for technique (“Pianofortes are young — they still have a lot of growing to do”). I will be pondering for years to come the riddle Clementi poses to John: “Which came first, an organ or an organist, a harpsichord or a harpsichordist, a pianoforte or a pianist?”角色们纷纷对原创性的价值发表见解（“人们跳舞时并不想思考，你必须写出让他们感到熟悉的音乐”）；探讨灵感与所有权之间的平衡（约翰的首部作品受惠于都柏林扫烟囱人）；表达对影响力的焦虑（父亲告诉他：“如果你想成为下一个莫扎特，就必须至少比他优秀两倍。为什么？因为阶梯上的那些位置——你知道我指的是哪座阶梯——那些梯级都已经有人占了”）；强调自我营销的重要性（人们“愿意花更多钱听我们演奏，是因为听说过我们的名字，并希望这能为他们增光”）；以及将乐器技术视为演奏技巧的载体（“钢琴还很年轻，还有很大的发展空间”）。在未来的岁月里，我都会反复琢磨克莱门蒂向约翰提出的那个谜题：“先有管风琴还是先有管风琴家？先有羽管键琴还是先有羽管键琴家？先有钢琴还是先有钢琴家？”In a quietly revelatory moment, Li deploys the title language of her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” about the death of her younger son by suicide, six years after her older son died the same way. There, the phrase asserts that, clichés to the contrary, growth occurs unfreighted with meaning or intention, and Li’s garden “is not a metaphor for hope or regeneration.”在一个看似平静却极具启示性的时刻，李翊云借用了她那部获普利策奖的回忆录《自然万物只是生长》(Things in Nature Merely Grow)的标题——该书记录了其幼子继长子走后六年同样自杀离世。与人们常挂在嘴边的陈词滥调相反，在该书中，“自然万物只是生长”强调的是生命生长并不承载任何意义或意图，而李翊云的花园也“并非希望或重生的隐喻”。In the novel, the neutrality of growth applies to John’s future:在小说中，这种关于发芽生长的中立性同样适用于约翰的未来：Things in nature merely grow: roses and hemlocks, beloved puppies and feral cats, prodigies and chimney sweeps, all expanding within their capacities, until they reach that turning point where the world is no longer new. Living then becomes a chore of marking time: hours, days, seasons.自然界的事物仅仅是生长：玫瑰与毒堇，受宠的小狗与野猫，神童与扫烟囱人，都在其能力范围内舒展，直到抵达那个世界不再新鲜的转折点。此后的生存便成了打发时间的苦差事：计算着小时、日子与季节。Many children die young in “Music Against the Night,” upending our understanding of the order of things: “A child’s death is a negation of time, which no longer has now and then, now and again, now and later, only now and now and now and now.”在《抗》中，许多孩子过早夭折，颠覆了我们对生命秩序的认知：“孩子的死亡是对时间的否定，时间不再有此时与那时、此时与再次、此时与随后，只剩下此时、此时、此时与此时。”The sequence of “now”’s picks up directly from Li’s nonfiction, as if she were passing herself a baton — still carrying these themes, still rigorously thinking them through. We are lucky to be the beneficiaries of her process. I left this novel — her ninth work of fiction — keenly aware that I’d been in the presence of a world-class artist, and I am not talking about John Field.这种由“此时”构成的序列直接承接了李翊云的非虚构写作，仿佛她正在向自己传递接力棒——依然承载着这些主题，依然在严谨地审视着它们。我们很幸运能成为她这一思考过程的受益者。读完这部小说——她的第九部虚构作品——我敏锐地意识到自己刚刚领略了一位世界级艺术家的风采，而我说的并不是约翰·菲尔德。The idea of negating time lands differently in the final scene, though. It’s a coda that doubles as a prelude, as the chapter title puts it, and it carries the surprise and optimism of a fresh start. In fiction, Li can reverse course, resuscitate voices and phrases from the past, and grant them a second chance to be heard.然而，否定时间的观念在尾声阶段带来了截然不同的落脚点。正如章节标题所写，这是一个兼作序曲的尾声，蕴含着全新开始的惊喜与乐观。在虚构世界里，李翊云可以逆转时光，复活来自过去的的声音与词句，赋予它们第二次被倾听的机会。“There would never be a novel about Adelaide Percheron,” Li writes some hundred pages in, ventriloquizing her heroine’s youthful frustration with her insignificance. Now there is one. And while I wrote about it, I listened for the first time to a recording of nocturnes by Field. I hadn’t known he invented the form; I only knew that Frédéric Chopin made it famous.“永远不会有一部关于阿德莱德·佩什隆的小说，”几百页的文字过后，她写道，这是在借女主角之口宣泄她年轻时因自己的微不足道而产生的沮丧。而如今，这样的小说诞生了。在我撰写这篇书评时，我第一次聆听了菲尔德的夜曲。我此前竟不知道是他创造了夜曲这种体裁，只知道是弗雷德里克·肖邦将其发扬光大。MUSIC AGAINST THE NIGHT | By Yiyun Li | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 340 pp. | $29《抗衡黑夜的音乐》 | 李翊云著 | 法拉尔、施特劳斯与吉鲁出版社 | 340页 | 29美元翻译：经雷点击查看本文英文版。