美国国家公共电台 NPR Invisibilia: A Man Finds An Explosive Emotion Locked In A Word

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's Invisibilia is back for a third season. The show about the unseen forces that shape human behavior is taking a look at concepts like reality, identity, emotion and how those concepts shape our experience - sounds kind of abstract until you hear the stories and then you feel them. Today, Invisibilia co-host Alix Spiegel has the story of a man who was introduced to an emotional concept that does not exist in America and how he came to understand it.

ALIX SPIEGEL, BYLINE¹: This is where our story about the discovery of an emotion ends...

RENATO ROSALDO: (Vocalizing).

SPIEGEL: ...With a man howling in a car in California. Where the story starts is here...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Vocalizing).

SPIEGEL: ...In a remote region of the Philippines a long time ago, 1967. That was the year anthropologist² Renato Rosaldo and his wife, Shelly, set off to live with the llongot, an isolated³, unresearched tribe that lived deep in the rain forest. Now, it wasn't exactly an accident that the llongot were unstudied and isolated.

ROSALDO: They're known for their headhunting. They'll kill somebody and cut off their head.

SPIEGEL: But Renato and Shelly were undeterred. They knew that headhunting was part of a larger cultural ritual and felt certain that they wouldn't be at risk. So they packed up everything, including an enormous reel-to-reel tape recorder, and moved. And over time, they began one of the more difficult aspects of anthropological⁴ work - mapping the territory of the tribe's emotional world.

ROSALDO: That's one of the difficulties with cultural translation. It doesn't map one to one onto our concepts.

SPIEGEL: Still, while no llongot emotion expressed itself exactly the same way as an American emotion, Renato felt confident that he could do his job and translate their emotions...

ROSALDO: They were familiar enough to me, yes.

SPIEGEL: ...All but one.

ROSALDO: Liget.

(SOUNDBITE OF CLAPPING)

SPIEGEL: At first, liget looked like a simple feeling. And it had what we would think of as positive connotations. Renato would see a young man, and members of the tribe would tell him that man has liget.

ROSALDO: He can chop down 10 trees from the forest today.

SPIEGEL: But then one night, liget exploded out of that definition. It began innocently. Renato was sitting with some men, and someone asked him if he could play one of the tapes that he'd recorded. The voice of this man began to play.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Unintelligible).

SPIEGEL: ...This man who had been revered⁵ and loved but who had recently died.

ROSALDO: The room went suddenly silent, and I saw men's eyes all turned red. And they said turn off the tape. They couldn't stand it. And then they were talking about that this makes makes our hearts feel liget.

SPIEGEL: This is what they told him.

ROSALDO: They need to take a human head and throw it. I was just stunned⁶. I said I've never heard this kind of feeling with this intensity⁷ in my life.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SPIEGEL: What exactly was liget? It clearly wasn't just an excess of productive energy. Renato began asking everyone in the village, and from what he could piece together, liget was the communal⁸ feeling of being unmoored and out of control. Different things could bring it on - a death or painful reminder⁹ of it - but then the feeling would go viral, spreading to everyone in the tribe. One way they expressed the feeling was to gather together and wail¹⁰. But the primary way that liget was relieved - at least in the tribe's history - was through the communal act of headhunting.

ROSALDO: Yeah.

SPIEGEL: Renato says he actually spent years gathering¹¹ information on liget. But he says he never felt like he actually understood the concept in a real way.

ROSALDO: We were out of our depth.

SPIEGEL: Then came the fall of 1981 when Renato and his wife, Shelly, traveled to a different part of the Philippines. Their second day there, his wife, Shelly, set off with a guide named Conchita to explore.

ROSALDO: Then, the next thing I know, I hear this...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Vocalizing).

ROSALDO: ...To meet terrifying silence. The village suddenly became very quiet, and then, in walks the guide, Conchita. She said that Shelly had fallen.

SPIEGEL: Conchita led Renato along the trail to the place where Shelly had fallen.

ROSALDO: And they saw Shelly's body. The feeling I had was just almost a cosmic heaving, expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. But it wasn't just me. It was everything around me.

SPIEGEL: That day, crouching¹² next to Shelly's body on the riverbank, he says the seed of an alien emotion he'd never experienced before began to grow inside him.

ROSALDO: Yes, yes.

SPIEGEL: It was muted at first, didn't fully¹³ express itself until after, after Renato had flown back to America and arranged the funeral. Then one sunny, California afternoon, when he was driving down a highway in Palo Alto, he couldn't bear the pressure. So he pulled over on the side of the road and this sound came roaring out of him.

ROSALDO: I, out of nowhere, just started howling (vocalizing).

SPIEGEL: He felt this feeling in his body was liget. And he finally had English words for it.

ROSALDO: It's like being in high voltage.

SPIEGEL: High voltage - those are the English words that most closely approximate the feeling of liget.

ROSALDO: Like high voltage was flowing through my body.

SPIEGEL: He says he came to feel that this emotion, liget, it was better for him than the typical way of American grieving. He says he had this new emotion, this new concept. And he was grateful for it.

ROSALDO: Yeah. It was amazing relief. I sought it out. (Vocalizing).

SPIEGEL: Alix Spiegel, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EAGLEOWL VS WOODPIGEON")

EAGLEOWL: (Vocalizing).

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

3 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

4 anthropological   

adj.人类学的

参考例句：

• These facts of responsibility are an anthropological datums- varied and multiform. 这些道德事实是一种人类学资料——性质不同，形式各异。 来自哲学部分
• It is the most difficult of all anthropological data on which to "draw" the old Negro. 在所有的人类学资料中，最困难的事莫过于“刻划”古代的黑人。 来自辞典例句

5 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

6 stunned   

adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The fall stunned me for a moment. 那一下摔得我昏迷了片刻。
• The leaders of the Kopper Company were then stunned speechless. 科伯公司的领导们当时被惊得目瞪口呆。

7 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

8 communal   

adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的

参考例句：

• There was a communal toilet on the landing for the four flats.在楼梯平台上有一处公共卫生间供4套公寓使用。
• The toilets and other communal facilities were in a shocking state.厕所及其他公共设施的状况极其糟糕。

9 reminder   

n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示

参考例句：

• I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
• It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知，她才付应该交的房租。

10 wail   

vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸

参考例句：

• Somewhere in the audience an old woman's voice began plaintive wail.观众席里，一位老太太伤心地哭起来。
• One of the small children began to wail with terror.小孩中的一个吓得大哭起来。

11 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

12 crouching   

v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• a hulking figure crouching in the darkness 黑暗中蹲伏着的一个庞大身影
• A young man was crouching by the table, busily searching for something. 一个年轻人正蹲在桌边翻看什么。 来自汉英文学 - 散文英译

13 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。