1990.07 理查德-弗朗西斯-伯顿爵士船长

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理查德-弗朗西斯-伯顿爵士船长
作者：Phoebe-Lou Adams
1990年7月号
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作者：Edward Rice.Scribner's，35.00美元。任何发明像伯顿这样的人物的小说家都会被指责为把不可能的事情堆积在不可能的事情上，然而这个人确实活在1821年到1890年之间。人们对他的印象可能主要是他对《一千零一夜》的翻译，这是他后来的一项事业。他的父亲希望伯顿成为一名神职人员。事实上，他成为了东印度公司的一名军官、一名秘密特工、一名出色的语言学家、一名自学成才的人类学家、一名东方情色小说的收集者和传播者、一名坚持不懈的旅行者、一名多产的作家（四十多本书加上杂项作品）、一名皈依伊斯兰教的人、一名冒着生命危险前往麦加的朝圣者、一名在非洲和南美的探险家、一名零星的酒鬼，以及一个习惯于告诉英国当局他们不希望听到的真相而惹怒他们的人。伯顿的异国旅行和长达数月的失踪有多少是 "大游戏 "的一部分，这是一个无法回答的问题。他的传记作者怀疑，他的许多行动至少有一部分是特工工作，但如果是这样，他的报酬就很低。他太聪明了，太有活力了，而且太独来独往了，不适合维多利亚时代的体制。他掀起了风浪，而稳固的资产阶级船主虽然愿意偶尔利用这种才能，但认为没有理由为一个人做他明显喜欢做的事情而付钱。赖斯先生收集了大量关于伯顿和他所经营的地方的政治和历史的信息，编写了一本充满行动、阴谋和其主体的非正统意见的传记。这种质量的书应该得到比赖斯先生所得到的更好的校对。



Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton
By Phoebe-Lou Adams
JULY 1990 ISSUE
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byEdward Rice.Scribner’s, $35.00. Any novelist who invented a character like Burton would be accused of piling the impossible on the improbable, yet the man really lived, from 1821 to 1890. He is probably chiefly remembered for his translation of the Arabian Nights, which was one of his later enterprises. His father wanted Burton to become a clergyman. He in fact became an officer in the army of the East India Company, an undercover agent, an extraordinary linguist, a self-taught anthropologist, a collector and disseminator of Eastern erotica, a persistent traveler, a prolific author (more than forty books plus miscellaneous pieces), a convert to Islam, a pilgrim to Mecca at the risk of his life, an explorer in Africa and South America, a sporadic drunk, and a man with a habit of annoying the British authorities by telling them truths that they did not wish to hear. Just how many of Burton’s exotic peregrinations and months-long disappearances were part of the “Great Game“ is an unanswerable question. His biographer suspects that many of his proceedings were at least partly secret-service work, but if so, he was poorly rewarded. He was too brilliant, too energetic, and too much a loner to fit comfortably into the Victorian system. He made waves, and solidly bourgeois boat owners, while willing to use that talent on occasion, saw no reason to pay a man for doing what he clearly liked to do. Mr. Rice has amassed an enormous amount of information on Burton and on the politics and history of the places where he operated, producing a biography full of action, intrigue, and the unorthodox opinions of its subject. A book of this quality deserves better proofreading than Mr. Rice’s has received.