Book Review;The life of LillianHellman;Profile in courage

　　書評;麗蓮海爾曼的生活;勇氣的輪廓;

　　Lillian Hellman, a popular playwright andbestselling author, was a minor player in Americanintellectual circles. So why is she still such adivisive figure?

　　麗蓮海爾曼，一個有名的劇作家和暢銷書作者，曾今是美國知識分子圈中的一個小角色。但是為什么時至今日，她還是一個如此備受爭議的人物?

　　A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Timesof Lillian Hellman. By Alice Kessler-Harris.

　　《一個難對付的女人：莉蓮赫爾曼充滿挑戰(zhàn)的一生和她的時代》，阿麗絲凱斯勒哈里斯著。

　　Lillian Hellman knew how to tell a good story, and she liked to spin her own. So shedestroyed old letters, suppressed records and hushed friends. She replaced harddocumentation with soulful reminiscences of a Jewish childhood in New Orleans, of comingof age during the Depression and of defending her leftist ideals amid the hysteria of the coldwar. Flinty yet glamorous, she was blacklisted in the 1950s because she would not confessto a crime of disloyalty she felt she never committed. In memoirs and anecdotes, Hellmanpresented herself as she wished to be rememberedthe courageous and upright heroineof her own playand tried to destroy or quash everything else.

　　麗蓮海爾曼知道怎樣才能敘述出一個好的故事，并且她喜歡編寫關(guān)于自己的故事。正因為這樣，她廢棄了舊的書信，禁止寫記錄性的文件，緘默朋友。用充滿感情的回憶錄，取代了生硬刻板的文件。一個猶太人，在新奧爾良度過了自己的童年時光，成年時期經(jīng)歷了大蕭條，并且在歇斯底里的冷戰(zhàn)時期捍衛(wèi)她的左翼思想。在二十世紀五十年代，她被列入黑名單，原因是她不愿意承認自己犯了不忠罪，她覺得自己從來沒有犯過。雖然頑固了點，可是卻很絢爛。在回憶錄與軼事里，海爾曼這樣呈現(xiàn)自己一個有勇氣且正直的女英雄，并且試圖摧毀或是搗碎一切。

　　Hellman is an irresistible subject, but time has not been good to her reputation. Her effort tocontrol her legacy appears to have backfired. Once celebrated for her taut writing anddevotion to social justice, her image since her death in 1984, aged 79, has curdled intosomething villainous. Her plays are still performedparticularly The Little Foxes, whichsecured her fame in 1939but they are often dismissed as moralising melodramas. Hername now tends to invite vitriol about her being a Stalinist and a liar, a woman whopreached economic equality while swaddled in mink. She was a hypocritical bitch withballs, in the words of Elia Kazan, a film director, who seethed at Hellman s self-righteoustake on the McCarthy era.

　　海爾曼是一個讓人無法抗拒的主題，可是時間對她的名譽而言卻并不是一件好事。她企圖控制自己的遺產(chǎn)，沒料卻事與愿違。曾今人們贊美她那簡潔緊湊的著作，還有為社會正義所做出的努力。但是她的形象，在1984年79歲的她去世后，變質(zhì)成腐化墮落。人們?nèi)匀辉诒硌菟膭”荆绕涫?939年為她贏得名聲的《小狐貍》。但是更多的時候，劇本被認為是具有說教性質(zhì)的情景劇，因此不予考慮。一提起她的名字，就會引來社會對她的尖酸刻薄的評價。一個斯大林主義者，撒謊精，一個鼓吹經(jīng)濟平等卻穿著貂皮大衣的女流之輩。用美國導(dǎo)演伊利亞卡贊的話說，她是一個虛偽的長有男性睪丸的婊子。導(dǎo)演伊利亞卡贊及其討厭海爾曼在麥卡錫時代的自以為是。

　　This is the backdrop of A Difficult Woman. Alice Kessler-Harris, an American historian atColumbia University, begins her thoughtful book assuring readers that it would be folly totry to capture the real Lillian, whoever that is. Hellman is too slippery a subject and toounco-operative a source for that. Rather, this biography works to answer the question ofwhy Hellman remains such a divisive figure, a lightning rod for the anger, fear andpassion that divided Americans during an especially fraught ideological time.

　　這是令人深思的書籍《一個難對付的女人》的創(chuàng)作背景。艾麗斯凱斯勒哈里斯，美國哥倫比亞大學(xué)歷史學(xué)家，如此開頭本書向人們保證，企圖捕捉真實的麗蓮是一件愚蠢的事，不管是誰。原因是海爾曼是如此的狡猾，如此的不可合作。準確點說，這本傳記主要是來回答海爾曼為什么是這樣一位富有爭議的人物，是憤怒，恐懼與激情的避雷針，在各種意識形態(tài)混雜的時代，讓美國人四分五散。

　　Ambitious, acerbic and direct to the point of rudeness, Hellman was a woman of voraciousappetites, the kind of tough broad who can take the tops off bottles with her teeth,according to a 1941 New Yorker profile. She knew she wasn t a beauty , but she bristled with a sexualcharisma designed to distract husbands from their wives. Lonely and insecure about herdesirability, she found affirmation in affairs and friendships with men.

　　野心勃勃，尖刻，并直接達到粗魯?shù)某潭取：柭莻€貪吃的女人，據(jù)1941年雜志紐約形象描述，她粗魯?shù)目梢杂醚例X扯下瓶塞。她知道自己不是一個美人，但是她性感十足，專門勾引別人的老公。孤獨，還有對性感的不安全感，使得她在艷遇和與男人的友誼中尋求肯定。

　　The most significant of these was with Dashiell Hammett, a famous and flamboyantlyalcoholic writer of detective novels, with whom she enjoyed an unconventional romancefor 30 years until he died in 1961. Hellman always credited him with teaching her how towrite, showing her how to craft distinctive characters with just a few lines of raffishdialogue. In turn Hellman bailed Hammett out of the occasional fix, and tended to hisreputation and estate for the rest of her life.

　　與她交往的最有名的當屬達希爾哈米特。達希爾哈米特，偵探小說家，著名，有派頭，酗酒。直到1961年達希爾哈米特死亡，海爾曼跟他經(jīng)歷了30年的不同尋常的浪漫。海爾曼經(jīng)常說他的好話，比如他教她如何寫作，如何用幾行簡短的低級趣味的對白塑造出與眾不同的人物形象。對應(yīng)地，海爾曼保釋達希爾哈米特于偶爾的賄賂，并用其余生悉心照料他的名譽和財產(chǎn)。

　　Vehemently anti-fascist, Hellman fought for civil rights and civil liberties, always believing abetter future was within reach. She became a labour organiser during the Depression, andtravelled to Spain to witness the horrors of its civil war. She flirted with communism in the1930s, seeing the party as an essential check on fascism in Europe. Problematically, shejoined the party after the worst of Moscow s purges and show trials, and even signed a letterdeclaring her faith in the guilt of the defendants. But her membership was brief, and shelater expressed regret for not having understood just how blood-soaked Stalin was.

　　海爾曼是激進的反法西斯主義者，為了人權(quán)和自由而戰(zhàn)，并且堅信美好的未來就在手邊。在大蕭條時期，她成為工會的組織者，并且親赴西班牙，見證內(nèi)戰(zhàn)的恐怖。在十九世紀三十年代，她與共產(chǎn)主義接觸，親眼目睹了，在歐洲，主要的被抓捕對象是共產(chǎn)黨。給她真正惹麻煩的，是在糟糕的莫斯科大清洗后，她加入了共產(chǎn)黨，并且出庭，甚至簽署一封信，宣稱自己對被告的過失有信心。

　　Amid growing fears about the Soviet menace in the 1950s, Hellman still loudly supportedpeaceful coexistence rather than aggressive containment. Called before the HouseUn-American Activities Committee in 1952, she elegantly declared that it wasindecent and dishonourable to name names in order to save herself, particularly when shedid not feel she had done anything wrong. America s repression of communism, she argued,was more insidious than the threat of it. Despite decades of involvement in progressivepolitics and her public criticism of Stalin s regime, Hellman is still regarded as anunrepentant Stalinist.

　　在1950年代，人們在對蘇聯(lián)的威脅戰(zhàn)戰(zhàn)兢兢之際，海爾曼依舊高調(diào)支持和平共處而不是強制遏制。1952年，在被非美活動調(diào)查委員會傳喚之前，為了保全自己，她高雅地宣稱公開點名是不得體且不被尊重的。看點是，她還并不覺得自己做錯了什么。針對美國對共產(chǎn)黨的鎮(zhèn)壓，她反駁道，比起共產(chǎn)黨帶來的威脅，這更陰險。盡管她參與了幾十年的政治改革，并且公開批評斯大林政權(quán)，海爾曼還是被標榜為頑固不化的斯大林主義者。

　　Ms Kessler-Harris largely defends Hellman against her harshest critics by placing her and herchoicessuch as her defence of communism and her refusal to embrace feminismin thecontext of her times. Hellman s politics were often naive, but she was hardly alone. She hadthe sense of justice of a very small child, according to a friend, and she conveyed this moralcertainty in her plays. But she was a bit player in intellectual circles, a celebrity whoseoutspokenness earned her disproportionate attention. So why has Hellman become a symbolfor all that went wrong in the ideological battles of the 20th century? Ms Kessler-Harris arguesthat it may have something to do with the fact that she was a brassy, unattractive andsexually voracious woman who reaped commercial success from middlebrow work.

　　凱斯勒哈里斯女士替海爾曼講話，反對那些針對她的苛刻的批評。主要是通過把海爾曼放在她所處的時代來看待她這個人和她的決定。諸如，防衛(wèi)共產(chǎn)主義，拒絕擁抱女權(quán)主義。海爾曼的政治活動通常是天真幼稚的，但是卻都不是她一個人的行為。根據(jù)她一個朋友的說法，她有一種一個非常小的小孩子的正義感，這在她的劇本中有所體現(xiàn)。在知識分子層中，她可以說算是跑龍?zhí)椎模墒撬奶孤手毖裕嵶懔巳藗兊难矍颉Ｔ诙兰o意識形態(tài)競爭焦灼的年代，到底是什么讓海爾曼成了一個標志?凱斯勒哈里斯女士認為，這來源于這樣一個事實，她臉皮厚，長的不好看，性貪婪，但是卻能從極普通的工作中攫取大量的商業(yè)財富。

　　Hellman hardly helped matters by claiming her own moral superiority. In her 1976memoir, Scoundrel Time, she lambasts fellow leftists for not speaking up when innocentAmericans were being jailed or ruined by the HUAC witch hunt. Her anger was not directed atthe government, but at the people of my world, the intellectuals who did nothing to defendAmerica s civil liberties. By placing herself on this righteous pedestal, touting her ownbravery in a time of fear, she left herself open to criticism, particularly for her blindness toStalin s sins. She was also more vulnerable to claims that she twisted the facts to promoteher story of personal courage.

　　海爾曼想通過聲稱自己的道德優(yōu)越感來幫助解決事情，可事情卻正好相反。1976年的回憶錄《邪惡的日子》，HUAC監(jiān)禁或迫害無辜的美國人民，左翼分子們沒有大聲抗議，海爾曼炮轟同行的行為。她的憤怒并不是指向美國政府，而是我的王國里的人們，那些知識分子，對于保衛(wèi)人民的自由，置若罔聞。她把自己當做正義的化身，在人們充滿恐懼心理的年代，兜售自己的勇敢。海爾曼將自己置于大眾批評的箭靶之下，尤其是她對斯大林罪行的一無所知。同時她也很容易讓人們攻擊她利用扭曲事實來推廣自己很有勇氣。

　　But the final nail in the coffin of Hellman s reputation was hammered in 1980, when shedecided to go after Mary McCarthy, a novelist and literary critic, for defaming her in alate-night TV interview. Younger, more attractive and intellectually fierce, McCarthyaccused Hellman of being a bad and dishonest writer; every word she writes is a lie,including and and the . Hellman sued. The lawsuit lasted for the rest of her life. Afteryears of defending civil liberties and criticising rapacious wealth-seeking, Hellman ended herdays seeming like a greedy and vengeful censor.

　　但是，給海爾曼的名聲帶來致命一擊的，是1980年她與瑪麗麥卡錫的官司。瑪麗麥卡錫，小說家和文學(xué)批評家，在一檔晚間電視訪談中說了海爾曼的壞話。麥卡錫，更年輕，更有吸引力，更智慧，譴責(zé)海爾曼是一個壞人，一個不誠實的作家：她寫的每一個詞，包括and 和the 都是謊言。海爾曼起訴她。這場官司一直持續(xù)到海爾曼生命的最后。多年以來，她保衛(wèi)人民自由，譴責(zé)貪婪的追求財富的行為，不料在生命結(jié)束之際，看起來卻像是個貪婪的，報復(fù)心重的審查員。

　　This is a shame. Hellman may not have been the hero of her reminiscences, but she spent alifetime believing it was the duty of engaged citizens to fight racism, alleviate poverty andprotect civil liberties. She was a role model to feminists in the 1970s, but she despaired thatthey talked too much about bras and too little about economic opportunity and humanrights. She made some foolish choices, but Lillian Hellman was often on the right side ofhistory. Too bad so many of her good ideas have been tossed out with the bad ones.

　　這真是一件令人遺憾的事。海爾曼或許不是她回憶錄中的英雄，可是她終生堅信，反對種族歧視，緩解貧困，并且保護人民的自由是參與社會的人民應(yīng)有的義務(wù)。她是1970 年代女權(quán)運動的行為榜樣，但是她們談?wù)摰母嗟闹黝}是內(nèi)衣，經(jīng)濟機會和人權(quán)的實在太少，這很令海爾曼失望。雖然她做過一些愚蠢的決定，但是麗蓮海爾曼總是站在歷史的正確的一邊。真不幸，她的很多好的觀點隨著不好的，一同被丟棄。

　　Book Review;The life of LillianHellman;Profile in courage

　　書評;麗蓮海爾曼的生活;勇氣的輪廓;

　　Lillian Hellman, a popular playwright andbestselling author, was a minor player in Americanintellectual circles. So why is she still such adivisive figure?

　　麗蓮海爾曼，一個有名的劇作家和暢銷書作者，曾今是美國知識分子圈中的一個小角色。但是為什么時至今日，她還是一個如此備受爭議的人物?

　　A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Timesof Lillian Hellman. By Alice Kessler-Harris.

　　《一個難對付的女人：莉蓮赫爾曼充滿挑戰(zhàn)的一生和她的時代》，阿麗絲凱斯勒哈里斯著。

　　Lillian Hellman knew how to tell a good story, and she liked to spin her own. So shedestroyed old letters, suppressed records and hushed friends. She replaced harddocumentation with soulful reminiscences of a Jewish childhood in New Orleans, of comingof age during the Depression and of defending her leftist ideals amid the hysteria of the coldwar. Flinty yet glamorous, she was blacklisted in the 1950s because she would not confessto a crime of disloyalty she felt she never committed. In memoirs and anecdotes, Hellmanpresented herself as she wished to be rememberedthe courageous and upright heroineof her own playand tried to destroy or quash everything else.

　　麗蓮海爾曼知道怎樣才能敘述出一個好的故事，并且她喜歡編寫關(guān)于自己的故事。正因為這樣，她廢棄了舊的書信，禁止寫記錄性的文件，緘默朋友。用充滿感情的回憶錄，取代了生硬刻板的文件。一個猶太人，在新奧爾良度過了自己的童年時光，成年時期經(jīng)歷了大蕭條，并且在歇斯底里的冷戰(zhàn)時期捍衛(wèi)她的左翼思想。在二十世紀五十年代，她被列入黑名單，原因是她不愿意承認自己犯了不忠罪，她覺得自己從來沒有犯過。雖然頑固了點，可是卻很絢爛。在回憶錄與軼事里，海爾曼這樣呈現(xiàn)自己一個有勇氣且正直的女英雄，并且試圖摧毀或是搗碎一切。

　　Hellman is an irresistible subject, but time has not been good to her reputation. Her effort tocontrol her legacy appears to have backfired. Once celebrated for her taut writing anddevotion to social justice, her image since her death in 1984, aged 79, has curdled intosomething villainous. Her plays are still performedparticularly The Little Foxes, whichsecured her fame in 1939but they are often dismissed as moralising melodramas. Hername now tends to invite vitriol about her being a Stalinist and a liar, a woman whopreached economic equality while swaddled in mink. She was a hypocritical bitch withballs, in the words of Elia Kazan, a film director, who seethed at Hellman s self-righteoustake on the McCarthy era.

　　海爾曼是一個讓人無法抗拒的主題，可是時間對她的名譽而言卻并不是一件好事。她企圖控制自己的遺產(chǎn)，沒料卻事與愿違。曾今人們贊美她那簡潔緊湊的著作，還有為社會正義所做出的努力。但是她的形象，在1984年79歲的她去世后，變質(zhì)成腐化墮落。人們?nèi)匀辉诒硌菟膭”荆绕涫?939年為她贏得名聲的《小狐貍》。但是更多的時候，劇本被認為是具有說教性質(zhì)的情景劇，因此不予考慮。一提起她的名字，就會引來社會對她的尖酸刻薄的評價。一個斯大林主義者，撒謊精，一個鼓吹經(jīng)濟平等卻穿著貂皮大衣的女流之輩。用美國導(dǎo)演伊利亞卡贊的話說，她是一個虛偽的長有男性睪丸的婊子。導(dǎo)演伊利亞卡贊及其討厭海爾曼在麥卡錫時代的自以為是。

　　This is the backdrop of A Difficult Woman. Alice Kessler-Harris, an American historian atColumbia University, begins her thoughtful book assuring readers that it would be folly totry to capture the real Lillian, whoever that is. Hellman is too slippery a subject and toounco-operative a source for that. Rather, this biography works to answer the question ofwhy Hellman remains such a divisive figure, a lightning rod for the anger, fear andpassion that divided Americans during an especially fraught ideological time.

　　這是令人深思的書籍《一個難對付的女人》的創(chuàng)作背景。艾麗斯凱斯勒哈里斯，美國哥倫比亞大學(xué)歷史學(xué)家，如此開頭本書向人們保證，企圖捕捉真實的麗蓮是一件愚蠢的事，不管是誰。原因是海爾曼是如此的狡猾，如此的不可合作。準確點說，這本傳記主要是來回答海爾曼為什么是這樣一位富有爭議的人物，是憤怒，恐懼與激情的避雷針，在各種意識形態(tài)混雜的時代，讓美國人四分五散。

　　Ambitious, acerbic and direct to the point of rudeness, Hellman was a woman of voraciousappetites, the kind of tough broad who can take the tops off bottles with her teeth,according to a 1941 New Yorker profile. She knew she wasn t a beauty , but she bristled with a sexualcharisma designed to distract husbands from their wives. Lonely and insecure about herdesirability, she found affirmation in affairs and friendships with men.

　　野心勃勃，尖刻，并直接達到粗魯?shù)某潭取：柭莻€貪吃的女人，據(jù)1941年雜志紐約形象描述，她粗魯?shù)目梢杂醚例X扯下瓶塞。她知道自己不是一個美人，但是她性感十足，專門勾引別人的老公。孤獨，還有對性感的不安全感，使得她在艷遇和與男人的友誼中尋求肯定。

　　The most significant of these was with Dashiell Hammett, a famous and flamboyantlyalcoholic writer of detective novels, with whom she enjoyed an unconventional romancefor 30 years until he died in 1961. Hellman always credited him with teaching her how towrite, showing her how to craft distinctive characters with just a few lines of raffishdialogue. In turn Hellman bailed Hammett out of the occasional fix, and tended to hisreputation and estate for the rest of her life.

　　與她交往的最有名的當屬達希爾哈米特。達希爾哈米特，偵探小說家，著名，有派頭，酗酒。直到1961年達希爾哈米特死亡，海爾曼跟他經(jīng)歷了30年的不同尋常的浪漫。海爾曼經(jīng)常說他的好話，比如他教她如何寫作，如何用幾行簡短的低級趣味的對白塑造出與眾不同的人物形象。對應(yīng)地，海爾曼保釋達希爾哈米特于偶爾的賄賂，并用其余生悉心照料他的名譽和財產(chǎn)。

　　Vehemently anti-fascist, Hellman fought for civil rights and civil liberties, always believing abetter future was within reach. She became a labour organiser during the Depression, andtravelled to Spain to witness the horrors of its civil war. She flirted with communism in the1930s, seeing the party as an essential check on fascism in Europe. Problematically, shejoined the party after the worst of Moscow s purges and show trials, and even signed a letterdeclaring her faith in the guilt of the defendants. But her membership was brief, and shelater expressed regret for not having understood just how blood-soaked Stalin was.

　　海爾曼是激進的反法西斯主義者，為了人權(quán)和自由而戰(zhàn)，并且堅信美好的未來就在手邊。在大蕭條時期，她成為工會的組織者，并且親赴西班牙，見證內(nèi)戰(zhàn)的恐怖。在十九世紀三十年代，她與共產(chǎn)主義接觸，親眼目睹了，在歐洲，主要的被抓捕對象是共產(chǎn)黨。給她真正惹麻煩的，是在糟糕的莫斯科大清洗后，她加入了共產(chǎn)黨，并且出庭，甚至簽署一封信，宣稱自己對被告的過失有信心。

　　Amid growing fears about the Soviet menace in the 1950s, Hellman still loudly supportedpeaceful coexistence rather than aggressive containment. Called before the HouseUn-American Activities Committee in 1952, she elegantly declared that it wasindecent and dishonourable to name names in order to save herself, particularly when shedid not feel she had done anything wrong. America s repression of communism, she argued,was more insidious than the threat of it. Despite decades of involvement in progressivepolitics and her public criticism of Stalin s regime, Hellman is still regarded as anunrepentant Stalinist.

　　在1950年代，人們在對蘇聯(lián)的威脅戰(zhàn)戰(zhàn)兢兢之際，海爾曼依舊高調(diào)支持和平共處而不是強制遏制。1952年，在被非美活動調(diào)查委員會傳喚之前，為了保全自己，她高雅地宣稱公開點名是不得體且不被尊重的。看點是，她還并不覺得自己做錯了什么。針對美國對共產(chǎn)黨的鎮(zhèn)壓，她反駁道，比起共產(chǎn)黨帶來的威脅，這更陰險。盡管她參與了幾十年的政治改革，并且公開批評斯大林政權(quán)，海爾曼還是被標榜為頑固不化的斯大林主義者。

　　Ms Kessler-Harris largely defends Hellman against her harshest critics by placing her and herchoicessuch as her defence of communism and her refusal to embrace feminismin thecontext of her times. Hellman s politics were often naive, but she was hardly alone. She hadthe sense of justice of a very small child, according to a friend, and she conveyed this moralcertainty in her plays. But she was a bit player in intellectual circles, a celebrity whoseoutspokenness earned her disproportionate attention. So why has Hellman become a symbolfor all that went wrong in the ideological battles of the 20th century? Ms Kessler-Harris arguesthat it may have something to do with the fact that she was a brassy, unattractive andsexually voracious woman who reaped commercial success from middlebrow work.

　　凱斯勒哈里斯女士替海爾曼講話，反對那些針對她的苛刻的批評。主要是通過把海爾曼放在她所處的時代來看待她這個人和她的決定。諸如，防衛(wèi)共產(chǎn)主義，拒絕擁抱女權(quán)主義。海爾曼的政治活動通常是天真幼稚的，但是卻都不是她一個人的行為。根據(jù)她一個朋友的說法，她有一種一個非常小的小孩子的正義感，這在她的劇本中有所體現(xiàn)。在知識分子層中，她可以說算是跑龍?zhí)椎模墒撬奶孤手毖裕嵶懔巳藗兊难矍颉Ｔ诙兰o意識形態(tài)競爭焦灼的年代，到底是什么讓海爾曼成了一個標志?凱斯勒哈里斯女士認為，這來源于這樣一個事實，她臉皮厚，長的不好看，性貪婪，但是卻能從極普通的工作中攫取大量的商業(yè)財富。

　　Hellman hardly helped matters by claiming her own moral superiority. In her 1976memoir, Scoundrel Time, she lambasts fellow leftists for not speaking up when innocentAmericans were being jailed or ruined by the HUAC witch hunt. Her anger was not directed atthe government, but at the people of my world, the intellectuals who did nothing to defendAmerica s civil liberties. By placing herself on this righteous pedestal, touting her ownbravery in a time of fear, she left herself open to criticism, particularly for her blindness toStalin s sins. She was also more vulnerable to claims that she twisted the facts to promoteher story of personal courage.

　　海爾曼想通過聲稱自己的道德優(yōu)越感來幫助解決事情，可事情卻正好相反。1976年的回憶錄《邪惡的日子》，HUAC監(jiān)禁或迫害無辜的美國人民，左翼分子們沒有大聲抗議，海爾曼炮轟同行的行為。她的憤怒并不是指向美國政府，而是我的王國里的人們，那些知識分子，對于保衛(wèi)人民的自由，置若罔聞。她把自己當做正義的化身，在人們充滿恐懼心理的年代，兜售自己的勇敢。海爾曼將自己置于大眾批評的箭靶之下，尤其是她對斯大林罪行的一無所知。同時她也很容易讓人們攻擊她利用扭曲事實來推廣自己很有勇氣。

　　But the final nail in the coffin of Hellman s reputation was hammered in 1980, when shedecided to go after Mary McCarthy, a novelist and literary critic, for defaming her in alate-night TV interview. Younger, more attractive and intellectually fierce, McCarthyaccused Hellman of being a bad and dishonest writer; every word she writes is a lie,including and and the . Hellman sued. The lawsuit lasted for the rest of her life. Afteryears of defending civil liberties and criticising rapacious wealth-seeking, Hellman ended herdays seeming like a greedy and vengeful censor.

　　但是，給海爾曼的名聲帶來致命一擊的，是1980年她與瑪麗麥卡錫的官司。瑪麗麥卡錫，小說家和文學(xué)批評家，在一檔晚間電視訪談中說了海爾曼的壞話。麥卡錫，更年輕，更有吸引力，更智慧，譴責(zé)海爾曼是一個壞人，一個不誠實的作家：她寫的每一個詞，包括and 和the 都是謊言。海爾曼起訴她。這場官司一直持續(xù)到海爾曼生命的最后。多年以來，她保衛(wèi)人民自由，譴責(zé)貪婪的追求財富的行為，不料在生命結(jié)束之際，看起來卻像是個貪婪的，報復(fù)心重的審查員。

　　This is a shame. Hellman may not have been the hero of her reminiscences, but she spent alifetime believing it was the duty of engaged citizens to fight racism, alleviate poverty andprotect civil liberties. She was a role model to feminists in the 1970s, but she despaired thatthey talked too much about bras and too little about economic opportunity and humanrights. She made some foolish choices, but Lillian Hellman was often on the right side ofhistory. Too bad so many of her good ideas have been tossed out with the bad ones.

　　這真是一件令人遺憾的事。海爾曼或許不是她回憶錄中的英雄，可是她終生堅信，反對種族歧視，緩解貧困，并且保護人民的自由是參與社會的人民應(yīng)有的義務(wù)。她是1970 年代女權(quán)運動的行為榜樣，但是她們談?wù)摰母嗟闹黝}是內(nèi)衣，經(jīng)濟機會和人權(quán)的實在太少，這很令海爾曼失望。雖然她做過一些愚蠢的決定，但是麗蓮海爾曼總是站在歷史的正確的一邊。真不幸，她的很多好的觀點隨著不好的，一同被丟棄。