经典名著《百年孤独》问世50周年

The novel is a major example of a revolution in South American writing that was to have a profound influence on global literature. The method of writing that Marquez and others are credited with inventing, “magic realism”, shifted normal storytelling into a style where anything could happen.
这部小说是南美创作革命中的一大典范，在全球文坛具有深远影响。马尔克斯和其他人的写作手法创造了“魔幻现实主义”，将常规的故事叙述转变成了一种任何事情都可能发生的风格。

It is an epic tale of the nation of Colombia, from the country’s founding to the author’s own time. The nation is presented as the fictional town of Macondo; the Colombian people as the Buendia family and the people around them.
这是一个发生在哥伦比亚的史诗级故事，故事从这个国家成立之初开始，一直贯穿到作者所处的年代。这个国家以虚构的城镇马孔多出现在小说中，而哥伦比亚人民则如同布恩迪亚家族及其身边的人们。

Marquez treats Colombian history skeptically. He focuses on political corruption, civil war and the negative influence of American big business. And while this could be a description of a very conventional novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude is anything but conventional.
马尔克斯以一种怀疑的目光看待整个哥伦比亚历史。他关注着政治腐败、内战以及美国财团所带来的的负面影响。尽管这样的描述很像在形容一部相当传统的小说，但《百年孤独》却并不合乎常规。

To understand what makes Marquez’s work different, we must explore its “magical realist” style. Here is a random selection of incidents from his novel: A baby is born with a pig’s tail; ice is discovered; a bathroom is haunted by ghosts. A book filled with such strange things seems very silly. And indeed, the author wrote that it was difficult to find a style that would draw the reader in. First of all, he commented, “I tried to tell the story without believing in it.”
为了能够理解马尔克斯的作品有别于他人之处，我们需要探索其“魔幻现实主义”的风格。以下是从他的小说中随机抽取的一系列事件：生来就带着猪尾巴的婴儿；发现冰块；闹鬼的浴室。一本满是这些怪事的书看起来似乎傻里傻气的。事实上，作者也写道，要找到一个吸引读者的风格很难。首先，他评论到，“我试图在自己都不相信这个故事的前提下来讲故事。”

This is actually a technique with a long tradition. An example of this writing style is the 18th-century novel, Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) by Irish author Laurence Sterne (1713-1768). The book is full of very fanciful things. But because the character Tristram admits to the reader that it’s all made-up, the fancifulness is a joke shared between Sterne and the readers. Writing his novel, Marquez tried something like this, but found he couldn’t make it work for him.
事实上，这是个有着悠久传统的写作手法。18世纪，由爱尔兰作家劳伦斯·斯特恩（1713-1768）所著的小说《项狄传》便是一个例子。该书充满着天马行空的事物。但由于特里斯舛这一角色向读者点明了这一切都是虚构的，所以这些幻想都只是斯特恩和读者之间所分享的玩笑话。马尔克斯在创作自己的小说时，尝试了一些诸如此类的方法，然而却发现，这并不适合他。

It took amemory of his grandmother to show him the right way to write the novel. He recalled that when she told him stories in his childhood, she would put on a “brick face”. Marquez remembered this trick and began to write the novel differently. He wrote, “I discovered that what I had to do was believe in [the characters] myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them.”
一段与祖母的回忆，为马尔克斯创作该书指明了方向。他回忆道，年少时，祖母给他讲故事时的“严肃脸”。 马尔克斯想起了这个小技巧，并开始以不同的方式写作。他写道，“我发现，我所需要做的就是相信（角色），用与我祖母讲故事时相同的表情来描绘他们。”

In other words: If you tell something to someone with an absolutely serious expression on your face, you have a chance of them believing what you say. It seems that mastering this trick of his grandmother’s helped Marquez create one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century.
换言之：如果你以一副相当严肃的表情告诉他人某件事情，你就有机会让他们相信你所说的事。掌握了祖母这一小技巧，似乎帮助了马尔克斯创造出20世纪最伟大的文学作品之一。

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