200年前的那場火山爆發改變了世界
In April 1815, the most powerful volcanic blast in recorded history shook the planet in a catastrophe so vast that 200 years later, investigators are still struggling to grasp its repercussions. It played a role, they now understand, in icy weather, agricultural collapse and global pandemics — and even gave rise to celebrated monsters.
1815年4月，有史以來最強烈的火山爆發令這顆星球陷入巨大的災難，200年後，研究者們仍在努力搞清它的後果。現在他們明白，這場爆發對氣候變冷、農業崩潰和全球流行病都有影響，甚至導致了某些著名怪物的出現。
Around the lush isles of the Dutch East Indies — modern-day Indonesia — the eruption of Mount Tambora killed tens of thousands of people. They were burned alive or killed by flying rocks, or they died later of starvation because the heavy ash smothered crops.
在荷屬東印度羣島（也就是如今的印度尼西亞）鬱鬱蔥蔥的海島，坦博拉火山(Mount Tambora)的爆發令數萬人喪生。他們遭到活埋、被從天而降的石塊砸死，濃重的火山灰令莊稼顆粒無收，不少人更是死於其後的饑荒。
More surprising, investigators have found that the giant cloud of minuscule particles spread around the globe, blocked sunlight and produced three years of planetary cooling. In June 1816, a blizzard pummeled upstate New York. That July and August, killer frosts in New England ravaged farms. Hailstones pounded London all summer.
更讓人驚訝的是，研究者們發現，火山微粒形成的巨大雲層蔓延全球，遮蔽陽光，造成了爲期三年的全球氣候變冷。1816年6月，一場暴風雪侵襲了紐約北部。當年的7月和8月，新英格蘭的農場受到霜災的致命破壞。倫敦整個夏天都遭到雹災。
A recent history of the disaster, “Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World,” by Gillen D’Arcy Wood, shows planetary effects so extreme that many nations and communities sustained waves of famine, disease, civil unrest and economic decline. Crops failed globally.
吉倫·達爾西·伍德(Gillen D’Arcy Wood)的新著《坦博拉：改變世界的火山爆發》(Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World)追溯了那段災難的歷史，展現它嚴重的全球影響，因爲這場災難，全世界很多國家和社區都遭到一波接一波的饑荒、疾病、社會動盪和經濟衰退。全球農作物都出現減產。
“The year without a summer,” as 1816 came to be known, gave birth not only to paintings of fiery sunsets and tempestuous skies but two genres of gothic fiction. The freakish progeny were Frankenstein and the human vampire, which have loomed large in art and literature ever since.
1816年是“沒有夏天的一年”，那一年不僅誕生了無數以烈日和暴風雪爲題材的油畫，也誕生了兩大類哥特小說：這兩個畸形的產物分別是弗蘭肯斯坦的怪物和人形吸血鬼，它們至今仍在藝術與文學世界扮演着重要角色。
“The paper trail,” said Dr. Wood, a University of Illinois professor of English, “goes back again and again to Tambora.”
伍德博士是伊利諾斯大學的英語教授，他說“相關書面記載可以一再追溯到坦博拉”。
The gargantuan blast — 100 times bigger than Mount St. Helens’s — and its ensuing worldwide pall have been the subject of increasing study over the years as scientists have sought to comprehend not only the planet’s climatological past but the future likelihood of such global disasters.
坦博拉火山爆發比聖海倫斯山火山爆發劇烈十倍，爲整個世界蒙上了一層屍衣，後世對它的研究日益增多，科學家們希望掌握的不僅僅是地球過去的氣候學資料，也希望能瞭解未來是否會有可能發生類似的全球性災難。
Clive Oppenheimer, a volcanologist at the University of Cambridge, who has studied the Tambora catastrophe, put the chance of a similar explosion in the next half-century as relatively low — perhaps 10 percent. But the consequences, he added, could run extraordinarily high.
克萊夫·奧芬海默(Clive Oppenheimer)是劍橋大學的火山學家，一直研究坦博拉火山災難，他認爲，在接下來的50年裏，發生類似爆發的可能性非常低，大約只有10%。但是一旦發生，其後果會相當嚴重。
“The modern world,” Dr. Oppenheimer said, “is far from immune to the potentially catastrophic impacts.”
“現代世界遠遠沒有發展到不受災難影響的地步，” 奧芬海默博士說。
Before it exploded, Tambora was the tallest peak in a land of cloudy summits. It lay atop the tropic isle of Sumbawa, its spires rising nearly three miles. Long dormant, the mountain was considered a home to gods. Villages dotted its slopes, and nearby farmers grew rice, coffee and pepper.
在爆發之前，坦博拉是這片雲霧繚繞的山地中的最高峯。它位於熱帶的松巴哇島上，頂峯將近三英里高（一英里約合1609米——譯註）。這座火山蟄伏已久，被認爲是神祇的居所。山坡上星星點點地分佈着村莊，附近的農民種植稻米、咖啡和胡椒。
On the evening of April 5, 1815, according to contemporary accounts, flames shot from its summit and the earth rumbled for hours. The volcano then fell silent.
根據當代的說法，1815年4月5日，火焰從頂峯冒出，大地開始顫抖，長達數個小時，之後火山重新陷入寂靜。
Five days later, the peak exploded in a deafening roar of fire, rock and boiling ash that was heard hundreds of miles away. Flaming rivers of molten rock ran down the slopes, destroying tropic forests and villages. Days later, still raging but by then hollow, the mountain collapsed, its height suddenly diminished by a mile.
五天後，山峯爆發出火焰、岩石與熱灰，聲音震耳欲聾，幾百英里外都能聽到。熔岩沿着山坡流淌，毀壞了熱帶雨林和村莊。幾天後，火山還在活躍，但內部已經空了，山體開始塌陷，高聳的山峯最後只剩一英里高。
Locally, an estimated 100,000 people died. Sumbawa never recovered.
當地有大約10萬人喪生。松巴哇島再也未能復原。
The repercussions were global, but no one realized that the widespread death and mayhem arose from an eruption halfway around the world. What emerged was regional folklore. New Englanders called 1816 “eighteen hundred and froze to death.” Germans called 1817 the year of the beggar. These and many other local episodes remained unknown or unconnected.
災難帶來了全球性後果，但是沒有人意識到蔓延全球的死亡與災難發源於地球中部的一場火山爆發。只有地區性的民間說法流傳開來。新英格蘭人說1816年是“凍死人年”。德國人說1817年是“乞丐之年”。這些，還有其他很多地方的零星說法一直未能連貫起來。
It was scientists who began to stitch together the big picture, especially the peculiar link between fiery volcanism and icy weather. An overarching goal was to separate natural climate fluctuations from those of human origin. One after another, studies came back to New England and its frigid summer of 1816.
是科學家們開始慢慢湊出宏大的圖景，特別是兇猛的火山活動與寒冷氣候之間的關係。一個重要研究目的是區分開自然的氣候波動與人爲影響的氣候變化。一項接一項的研究都可以追溯到到新英格蘭，以及1816年那裏寒冷的夏天。
Dr. Wood expanded the portrait in his book, which is due out in paperback next month. It draws on hundreds of scientific papers as well as Dr. Wood’s knowledge of 19th-century literature to lay bare three years of planetary mayhem as well as the origins of fictional demons.
伍德博士的書將在下月出版平裝版，他在書中展開了這幅畫卷。它建立在數百份科學文獻基礎之上，伍德對19世紀文學的知識也頗有裨益，它生動地揭示出爲期三年的全球災害，乃至虛構怪物的起源。
“My interest was to understand a global event,” Dr. Wood said in an interview, “and that meant serious detective work in lots of unfamiliar archives.” Five years of inquiry took him to China, Europe and India.
“我的興趣是理解一件全球事件，”伍德博士在接受採訪時說，“這意味着利用許多陌生的資料，做嚴肅的研究工作。”他在中國、歐洲與印度做了爲期五年的調查。
It also transported him to Tambora, where he braved leeches and razor-sharp leaves to peer across its yawning caldera, four miles from rim to rim.
他還去了坦博拉，不顧水蛭與刀鋒般尖銳的草葉，穿過直徑長達四英里的火山口。
The exploding mountain, the book notes, heaved some 12 cubic miles of earthen matter to a height of more than 25 miles. While coarse particles soon Rained out, finer ones traveled the high winds in a spreading cloud. “It passed,” Dr. Wood wrote, “across both south and north poles, leaving a telltale sulfate imprint on the ice for paleoclimatologists to discover more than a century and a half later.”
書中寫道，火山爆發時噴出了12立方英里的火山灰，噴射高度達到25英里。粗大的微粒開始落向地面之時，細小的微粒已經隨着雲朵在高空氣流中旅行了。伍德博士寫道，“它們最遠一直來到南北極，在冰上留下泄露行蹤的硫酸鹽痕跡，因此一個半世紀之後，考古氣象學家們才能發現它們的存在。”
The global veil, high above rain clouds, reflected much sunlight back into space. So the planet cooled. The pall, Dr. Wood said, also spawned tempests far below.
它們就這樣潛藏在高高的雨雲之中，爲全世界蒙上了一層面紗，把大量陽光反射回太空之中。於是整個地球就變冷了。伍德博士說，這層“屍衣”還爲下界帶來了暴風驟雨。
His book reprints an 1816 oil painting of Weymouth Bay, a sheltered cove on England’s south coast, by John Constable — the sky above churning with dark clouds. “Everywhere,” Dr. Wood said, “the volcanic winds blew hard.” He noted that both history and computer models speak of fierce storms back then.
書中收錄了一幅1816年約翰·康斯太勃爾(John Constable)的油畫，畫面上是英國南部海岸的避風港韋茅斯灣，天空中籠罩着一片陰雲。伍德博士寫道，“到處都有火山引起的大風。”他指出，歷史記載與電腦模型都表明當時有巨大的風暴。
The particles high in the atmosphere also produced spectacular sunsets, as detailed in the famous paintings of J.M.W. Turner, the English landscape pioneer. His vivid red skies, Dr. Wood remarked, “seem like an advertisement for the future of art.”
高空大氣中的火山微粒還製造出壯觀的日落景象，被英國風景畫的先驅者J·M·W·透納(J.M.W. Turner)詳細捕捉在筆下。伍德博士說，他畫中生動的紅色天空“就像是藝術之未來的廣告。”
The story also comes alive in local dramas, none more important for literary history than the birth of Frankenstein’s monster and the human vampire. That happened on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where some of the most famous names of English poetry had gone on a summer holiday.
世界各地都出現不少軼事，對於世界文學史而言，最重要的莫過與弗蘭肯斯坦的怪物與人型吸血鬼。這件事發生在瑞士的日內瓦湖畔，當時英國詩壇上最重要的幾個人在那裏消夏。
By 1816, Switzerland, landlocked and famously rugged, was beginning to reel from the bad weather and failed crops. Starving mobs stormed bakeries after bread prices soared. The book recounts a priest’s distress: “It is terrifying to see these walking skeletons devour the most repulsive foods with such avidity.”
1816年，多山的內陸國家瑞士也被捲入惡劣氣候與莊稼減產之中。麪包價格上升，捱餓的暴民衝進麪包房搶劫。書中引用一位傳教士沮喪的話語：“看到那些行屍走肉貪婪地大口吞吃最低劣的食物，實在太可怕了。”
That June, the cold and stormy weather sent the English tourists inside a lakeside villa to warm themselves by a fire and exchange ghost stories. Mary Shelley, then 18, was part of a literary coterie that included Percy Shelley, her future husband, as well as Lord Byron. Wine flowed, as did laudanum, a form of opium. Candles flickered.
那年六月，寒冷多雨的天氣讓這幾個居住在湖畔公寓的英國旅行者們圍在火邊取暖，講鬼故事。18歲的瑪麗·雪萊(Mary Shelley)和她未來的丈夫珀西·雪萊(Percy Shelley)以及拜倫勳爵(Lord Byron)同屬於一個文學小團體。燭光閃爍，他們在一起喝酒，吃鴉片酊。
In this moody atmosphere, Mary Shelley came up with her lurid tale of Frankenstein, which she published two years later. And Lord Byron hit on the outline of the modern vampire tale, published later by a compatriot as “The Vampyre.” The freakish weather also inspired Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness.”
就在這樣一種氛圍之下，瑪麗·雪萊構思了關於弗蘭肯斯坦的可怕故事，並於兩年後出版。拜倫勳爵則想出了一個現代吸血鬼故事的大綱，後來被他的一個同胞（拜倫的祕書兼私人醫生John William Polidori——譯註）拿去，以《吸血鬼》(The Vampyre)之名出版。詭異的天氣還激發拜倫寫下了末世氛圍的詩篇《黑暗》(Darkness)。
Dr. Wood’s book documents many other repercussions of the planetary chill, devoting a chapter to a cholera pandemic of 1817 that began in India and globally killed tens of millions of people. Dr. Wood attributes its rise to a deadly combination of monsoonal changes and pounding rains — a main theory of leading cholera detectives.
伍德的書記錄了全球嚴寒帶來的許多影響，其中一章是關於1817年於印度興起，最終波及全世界的霍亂，它導致全球數千萬人喪生。伍德博士認爲，疾病的流行是因爲季風變化與傾盆大雨這個致命組合——這也是頂尖霍亂研究者的主要理論。
The pandemic spread and eventually reached the Dutch East Indies. On Java alone it killed an estimated 125,000 people — more, Dr. Wood noted, “than died in the volcanic eruption itself.”
蔓延的疾病最終來到荷屬東印度羣島。僅在爪哇，就有大約12.5萬人以上喪生。伍德寫道：“這比火山爆發中死去的人還要多。”
He also profiles the wintry chill in Yunnan Province in southern China, a land of mountains and jungles roamed by tigers and elephants. Rice crops there quickly failed, and famine gnawed deep for years. In July 1816, Dr. Wood noted, the province had “unprecedented snows.”
他還寫到中國南部雲南省遭遇冬天般的嚴寒，這裏佈滿山脈和雨林，有老虎和大象出沒。稻米種植很快遭到破壞，饑荒延續數年。1816年7月，伍德博士寫道，這個省份“史無前例地下了雪”。
The poet, Li Yuyang, who was 32 as Tambora began its global rampage, wrote of cold downpours and flash flooding in “A Sigh for Autumn Rain.”
坦博拉所帶來的後果肆虐全球之時，詩人李於陽32歲，他把冰冷的傾盆大雨和大洪水寫進了自己的詩《秋雨嘆》。
Dr. Wood closes with a portrait of the eastern United States in 1816, focusing first on upstate New York. One day that June, four young classmates walked to school, most barefoot. Then a blizzard struck. Dismissed early, the children ran for their lives as the snow rose to their knees. They succeeded in reaching warm cabins and fires.
最後，伍德博士對1816年的美國東部進行了描述，首當其衝的是紐約北部。6月的一天，四個年輕人赤着腳去上學。然後來了一陣暴風雪。孩子們提早放學，積雪沒過了他們的膝蓋，只得奔跑求生。最後終於衝進生着火的溫暖小屋。
For Thomas Jefferson, the pain lasted longer. The retired third president of the United States, at his estate in Virginia, faced a disastrous summer in 1816 because of the remarkably short growing season. The next year was just as bad.
托馬斯·傑斐遜(Thomas Jefferson)的痛苦持續得更爲長久。這位美國第三任總統退休後住在弗吉尼亞州的宅邸，1816年夏天，作物歉收令他損失慘重。翌年還是同樣糟糕。
In a letter, Jefferson expressed concern about the possible ruin of his Monticello farm “if the seasons should, against the course of nature hitherto observed, continue constantly hostile to our agriculture.”
在一封信裏，傑斐遜擔心 “如果目前這種違背自然規律的時令延續下去，一直對農業不利，” 他的蒙蒂塞洛農場可能會倒掉。
The countless victims and occasional beneficiaries of Tambora’s fury were oblivious to the volcanic roots of their circumstances, Dr. Wood noted, making the challenge of writing about it formidable and “occasionally mind-bending.”
伍德博士指出，坦博拉之怒的無數受害者與個別受益者根本不知道火山爆發對自身環境的影響，這對寫作構成了極大挑戰，“有時候要絞盡腦汁”。
More generally, he said, the revelation of global volcanic ruin — a portrait 200 years in the making — offers a kind of meditation on the difficulty of uncovering the subtle effects of climate change, whether its origins lie in nature’s fury or the invisible byproducts of human civilization.
他說，在更多時候，火山爆發在全球造成的破壞——這是一幅縱貫200年的畫卷——令他想到，發現氣候變化的微妙影響是多麼困難，不管這影響是來自大自然的憤怒，抑或人類文明無形的副產品。
It is, Dr. Wood remarked, “hard to see and no less difficult to imagine.”
伍德博士說，這一切“很難看到，同樣也很難想像”。
