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琚儿，女，QE在职，梦想能仗翻译/音乐/健康走天涯
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英文部分选自经济学人2024087期讣告板块
讣告 | 如何修补大教堂
西蒙·维蒂信奉中世纪古法
这位石匠/石窟建筑大师于 8 月 11 日去世，享年79岁
The first thing you noticed about Simon Verity was his hair. It stuck out in wild grey corkscrews, as if sprayed with the fiercest sort of gel. That grey was not a sign of age, or only partly. It was mostly stone-dust, accumulated until he could never wash it out. That same dust covered the rest of his comfortably trampish clothes. When he walked down the street, he liked to think, he looked like an apparition.
见到西蒙·维蒂，人们第一眼就会注意到他的头发：灰白凌乱，呈卷曲状支棱着，像是喷了最强力的发胶。这种灰白不是年纪的缘故，或者年纪只是原因之一，主要是石尘不断在他头发上积聚，洗也洗不干净。他那宽松得邋里邋遢的衣服同样也沾满了石尘。走在街上，他总觉得自己就像个幽灵。
Inside that head he carried secrets. They were the same that had passed between masons, and were kept close, in the 13th century: the secret of architectural proportion, and of how to erect and balance, like fine branches, masses of cut stone. Whenever he started a cathedral job, making that first chip, he thought of the builders who had preceded him. Those masons had understood the cosmos as sacred geometry, and that was his conviction also.
就这么一个人，脑子里却装着秘密，是13 世纪时就流传于石匠之间的秘密：关于建筑比例的秘诀，以及如何把大量切割石料像轻巧的树枝那样稳稳搭建起来。每当开始修复教堂工作时，在下锥之前，他都会想起那些石匠先辈们。他们将宇宙视为神圣的几何学，这也同样是他的信念。
The tools he carried, accordingly, were like theirs. He used a hammer, a chisel and a mallet, patiently probing and hitting the stone to reveal the forms that lay inside. A blow every second for each two-hour session, thousands of blows a day. He did not go by drawn designs, because the stone itself—a soft and muted pitch here, hard and ringing there—had its own song. He followed that. People passing below him, as he worked on some cathedral face, heard a sound like a woodpecker, tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Often they stopped to shout encouragement or advice. The whole experience was exactly what medieval masons would have known: pigeon dung in his eyes, the bone-chill of a chisel in December, the distractions of the crowd, the sempiternal dust.
因此，他带的工具也和先辈们一样。用锤子、凿子和木槌，耐心地探测和敲击石头，探其机理。西蒙每次工作两小时，每秒钟敲击一次，一天敲击数千次。他不按设计图纸来开凿石料，因为石头本身就有自己的乐章，有的地方柔和低沉，有的地方坚硬响亮。他会顺势而为。在大教堂的立面工作时，人们从他脚下经过会听到像啄木鸟般的“嗒嗒”声，于是常常驻足，大声鼓励或是提出建议。工作时，西蒙的体验和中世纪时的石匠完全一样，鸽粪会掉落到他眼睛里，12 月里凿子冰冷刺骨，围观人群的干扰，还有没完没了的灰尘。
Like them, too, he was picked by bishops and princes. His chief cathedral commissions were at Wells and Exeter in England, his home country, and most famously the making of 31 statues of Old Testament figures for the Portal of Paradise, the great west door of St John the Divine in New York. He was also commissioned by Charles III, when Prince of Wales, to carve whales for him, and by Elton John to create a giant garden teacup from shards of broken crockery. Because his first skill had been at lettering that danced across stone, the families of John Betjeman, Nancy Mitford and Lady Diana Cooper ordered headstones from him. For patrons on both sides of the Atlantic he made garden seats, statues, mosaics and fountains, and at various great houses, chiefly in England, including at his old school, Marlborough, he restored derelict 18th-century grottoes to their previous dim, fantastic state. At Leeds Castle, he dug out a new one.
和他的中世纪前辈一样，他是被主教和王公贵族选中的。他承接的教堂工程主要是位于他的祖国英国的威尔斯和埃克塞特大教堂，而他最出名的作品是为纽约的圣约翰神明大教堂西大门（天堂之门）制作的31尊旧约人物雕像。查尔斯三世还是威尔士亲王时，也曾委托他雕刻鲸鱼，而埃尔顿·约翰则请他用陶器碎片制作一个巨大的花园茶杯。因为他最出彩的技艺是在石头上雕刻字母，他刻的字母非常灵动，约翰·贝杰曼、南希·米特福德和戴安娜·库珀夫人的家人都请他为墓碑刻字。他为大西洋两岸的主顾制作了花园座椅、雕像、马赛克和喷泉；在英格兰的许多大宅中，包括他母校马尔伯勒，他修复了荒废的18世纪石窟，恢复了之前昏暗奇幻的原貌。在利兹城堡，他还新开掘了一座石窟。
If he had any sort of genius, which he never liked to boast about, it was finding and handling strange materials. When he lived in New York, as he did from 1989, he was commissioned to make a piece to illustrate Mayor David Dinkins’s description of the city as “a gorgeous mosaic”. This called for thousands of tesserae, or tiny squarish bits of Murano glass and 40-50 sorts of stone. He included, too, chunks of burned bricks, pieces of kerbstones and fragments of a plate-glass door; anything that crossed his path. His grottoes needed not only shells by the cartload (cowries and abalones were his favourites), but coral, minerals, ferns, antlers, pieces of mirror and clear crystal. His aim was to create a world of rocks in combination with flowing water.
虽然他从来不自夸，但在发现和运用奇异材料方面他确实天赋异禀。自1989年定居美国起，他曾受委托创作一件作品，以呼应市长大卫·丁金斯对纽约的描述——“一个华丽的马赛克”。这项工作要用到成千上万的小块马赛克，包括穆拉诺玻璃碎片和40到50种不同的石材。他还加入了烧焦的砖块、路缘石的碎片和平板玻璃门残片，几乎是任何出现在他面前的材料都能用上。他的石窟不仅需要大量的贝壳（他最喜欢的是宝贝螺和鲍鱼），还需要珊瑚、矿物、蕨类植物、鹿角、镜子碎片和清澈的水晶。他的目标是创造一个岩石与流水相融合的世界。
Stone, though, remained what he most loved to play with. He had left Marlborough unhappy both with his school and his family’s long line of architects, but his great-uncle, Oliver Hill, offered him a refuge in the Cotswolds. Hill was an architect too, but also an interior decorator fascinated by materials. A weekend visit lasted five years, during which his young nephew tried printing and lettering, learned the geology of England, and decided he wanted to cut stone. His apprenticeship as a mason was at Wells cathedral in Somerset, working Bath limestone; an early public commission was at Canterbury, carving out the letters that marked the site of Becket’s shrine. He moved on to Purbeck, Portland and Hornton stone. To carve it, he needed to understand it; when he laid and engraved Caithness flagstone on a pathway in Lower Manhattan to commemorate the Britons who died in the 9/11 attacks, he went to the Highlands to feel its history. But America was the biggest revelation. So many marvellous kinds of stone, from the pink granite pavements of Tribeca to the red lava of New Mexico; and in such huge slabs, which he ached to get his hands on.
然而，石头始终是他最钟爱的材料。由于学校生活的不如意和对建筑师家族的传统不满，他离开了马尔伯勒。但他的叔祖父奥利弗·希尔在科茨沃尔德为他提供了一个避风港。希尔也是一位建筑师，还是一位痴迷各种材料的室内设计师。他连续五年每周末拜访叔祖父。在这期间，这位年轻的侄孙尝试了印刷和字母雕刻，学习了英格兰的地质学，并最终决定成为一名石匠。他在萨默塞特的威尔斯大教堂开始了他作为石匠的学徒生涯，学习雕刻巴斯石灰岩。他早期参与的一项公共项目，在坎特伯雷雕刻标志着贝克特神龛遗址的字母。他后来接触了普尔贝克、波特兰和霍顿石材。为了雕刻它们，他需要理解它们的特性；当他在曼哈顿下城铺设并雕刻凯斯内斯旗石小径，纪念在9/11袭击中丧生的英国人时，他专门去了苏格兰高地，感受石材的历史厚重感。但美国给他的触动最大，从特里贝卡的粉红色花岗岩人行道到新墨西哥的红色熔岩，如此多奇妙又巨大的石材，他渴望亲手雕刻。
His work at St John the Divine, with several assistants drawn from multiple backgrounds, took him from 1988 to 1997. There he tackled eight-foot or three-foot-six blocks of fine Indiana limestone. The figures for the portal could not be cut in a workshop, but had to be carved in situ high above Amsterdam Avenue. Braced up there, he coaxed out Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Moses, Elijah and Elisha. The upper rank of figures had to be painted, so he made his own, using the mineral crystals mentioned in the Book of Revelation: malachite, beryl, chrysoprase. As for the statues’ faces, they were based on people he knew. His friend Naomi became Naomi; Daniel, from the cathedral staff, was Daniel of lions fame; George, who ran the local coffee shop, turned up as Simeon. The work reflected the street where it was done. Medieval people had known that they were building blocks in a greater whole, and all connected, especially in works of devotion. Perhaps Manhattanites could feel the same.
1988年至1997年间，他带着几名背景各异的助手，在纽约圣约翰大教堂雕刻高8英尺（约2.44米）和3英尺6英寸（约1.07米）的优质印第安纳石灰岩块。教堂入口处的雕像无法在工作室里切割，只能在阿姆斯特丹大道上方现场雕刻。就这样，他在高空中细致雕琢出了亚伯拉罕、撒拉、雅各、摩西、以利亚和以利沙等圣经人物。位于上方的一排雕像需要上色，因此韦瑞提亲自调制颜料，使用了《启示录》中提到的矿物晶体（如孔雀石、绿柱石和绿玉髓）。至于雕像的面容，他则参考了熟人的长相。例如，他的朋友娜奥米成了拿俄米，教堂职员丹尼尔是“但以理与狮子洞”的但以理，当地咖啡店老板乔治成了西缅。这些作品反映了创作场地所在的街道氛围。中世纪时，人们已经意识到每个雕塑都是一个更大整体的一部分，相互联系，尤其是在宗教虔诚的作品中更是如此。也许曼哈顿人会有共鸣。
Beyond that, he also hoped to encourage the flow of life. The movement of shapes within stone; of water over rocks; of feet over paving in the passing of time; of his own hammering arm. Sometimes a spark came, and he felt a sudden blissful connection to the energy of all creation. He could not make that last. But he settled for feeling that he had added some beauty to what he had worked on, and larger purpose. Through the Portal of Paradise—as any medieval mason would have thought—anyone might enter, and he might enter, his wild hair a nimbus already, to be transformed.
此外，他还希望可以激发生命的流动。石头内部形状的运动；水淌过岩石的流动；时光流逝中在地面移动的脚步；他的手臂挥锤的舞动。偶尔，灵感的火花乍现，他会突然感受到一阵与所有造物能量相连的愉悦。这种感受无法长久持续。但他满足于自己为作品增添了一丝美感，并赋予它们更深远的意义。所有人都可能进入天堂之门——如同任何中世纪石匠所认为的那样，他也有可能进入，他蓬乱的头发仿佛一圈光环，预示他将经历转变。
UU，保持低调
Rachel，心有懵虎，细嗅乌龟
Shulin，时间是个好东西
Lucian，灵魂在杰作中冒险
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