传奇阿里 狂暴雷霆与雷霆之后的那道彩虹
Muhammad Ali, the three-time world heavyweight boxing champion who helped define his turbulent times as the most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century, died on Friday in a Phoenix-area hospital. He was 74.
三次世界重量级拳击冠军得主穆罕默德·阿里(Muhammad Ali)是20世纪最有人格魅力，也最具争议的体育人物，是那个动荡时代的代表性人物之一。当地时间周五他于凤凰城附近某医院逝世，享年74岁。
His death was confirmed by Bob Gunnell, a family spokesman.
家庭发言人鲍勃·冈内尔(Bob Gunnell)宣布了他的死讯。
Ali was the most thrilling if not the best heavyweight ever, carrying into the ring a physically lyrical, unorthodox boxing style that fused speed, agility and power more seamlessly than that of any fighter before him.
阿里即便不是有史以来最好的重量级拳击手，也是最激动人心的一位，他把一种与众不同的拳击风格带上拳台，赋予形体以诗意，将速度、机敏与力量融为一体，比他之前的任何拳手都要完美。
But he was more than the sum of his athletic gifts. An agile mind, a buoyant personality, a brash self-confidence and an evolving set of personal convictions fostered a magnetism that the ring alone could not contain. He entertained as much with his mouth as with his fists, narrating his life with a patter of inventive doggerel. (“Me! Wheeeeee!”)
但他的魅力不仅仅在于体育方面的天赋，他还拥有聪敏的头脑、乐观的性格、高傲的自信，以及一套不断发展的个人信念，令他在拳台之外也焕发出磁石般的魅力。他喜欢用一连串自创的打油诗来描述自己的生活 （比如他的短诗“Me! Wheeeeee!”），和他的拳头一样，他的语言同样饶有趣味。
Ali was as polarizing a superstar as the sports world has ever produced — both admired and vilified in the 1960s and ’70s for his religious, political and social stances. His refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, his rejection of racial integration at the height of the civil rights movement, his conversion from Christianity to Islam and the changing of his “slave” name, Cassius Clay, to one bestowed by the separatist black sect he joined, the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, were perceived as serious threats by the conservative establishment and noble acts of defiance by the liberal opposition.
阿里是体育界最毁誉参半的超级巨星——20世纪六七十年代，因为自己的信仰、政治与社会态度，他既受到赞美，也受到诋毁。越南战争时期，他拒绝被征召入伍，在民权运动如火如荼之际，他却拒绝种族融合，他从基督教皈依伊斯兰教，把自己作为“奴隶”后裔的名字卡修斯·克莱(Cassius Clay)改为穆罕默德·阿里，这个名字是由黑人分离主义团体“重新发现的伊斯兰民族”(Lost-Found Nation of Islam)授予他的，他亦是该组织的一员。这些举动令他被保守势力视为威胁，而开明反对派则视之为高贵的反抗行动。
Loved or hated, he remained for 50 years one of the most recognizable people on the planet.
不管是被爱还是被恨，在长达50年的时间，他一直是世界上最著名的人物之一。
In later life Ali became something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus. He was respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his antiwar principles after being banished from the ring; he was extolled for his un-self-conscious gallantry in the face of incurable illness, and he was beloved for his accommodating sweetness in public.
在某种意义上，阿里在人生的晚年成了尘世中的圣徒，一个被蒙上柔焦的传奇。他因为反战而遭禁赛，从而损失了作为拳击手三年的全盛时光，更损失了成百上千万难以估量的金钱，但也获得了人们的尊敬；在难以治愈的疾病面前，他不自觉地展现出非凡的勇气，因此备受赞美；而他在公开场合的平易近人、亲切友善更是令他受到爱戴。
In 1996, he was trembling and nearly mute as he lit the Olympic caldron in Atlanta.
1996年，他浑身颤抖，近乎缄默地点燃了亚特兰大奥运会的圣火。
That passive image was far removed from the exuberant, talkative, vainglorious 22-year-old who bounded out of Louisville, Ky., and onto the world stage in 1964 with an upset victory over Sonny Liston to become the world champion. The press called him the Louisville Lip. He called himself the Greatest.
这个顺服隐忍的形象与当年那个热情健谈，喜好自夸的小伙相去甚远——那是在1964年，22岁的他意外击败桑尼·利斯顿(Sonny Liston)成为世界冠军。肯塔基州路易斯维尔走出来的小伙子从此一举登上世界舞台。媒体叫他“路易斯维尔的大嘴巴”，他则称自己为“最棒的人”。
Ali also proved to be a shape-shifter — a public figure who kept reinventing his persona.
后来阿里也被证明是个变化多端的人，是个不断重新塑造自身角色的公众人物。
As a bubbly teenage gold medalist at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he parroted America’s Cold War line, lecturing a Soviet reporter about the superiority of the United States. But he became a critic of his country and a government target in 1966 with his declaration “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong.”
1960年的罗马奥运会上，少年得志的阿里夺得金牌。他鹦鹉学舌般重复着美国在“冷战”中的说辞，向一个苏联记者宣扬美国的优越性。但是到了1966年，他成了自己祖国的批评者，他的宣言“我没有任何理由反对越共”却令他成为政府的靶子。
“He lived a lot of lives for a lot of people,” said the comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory. “He was able to tell white folks for us to go to hell.”
“他代表无数人活出了无数种人生，”喜剧演员与民权活动人士迪克·格里高利(Dick Gregory)说。“他可以代表我们告诉白人：滚到一边去。”
But Ali had his hypocrisies, or at least inconsistencies. How could he consider himself a “race man” yet mock the skin color, hair and features of other African-Americans, most notably Joe Frazier, his rival and opponent in three classic matches? Ali called him “the gorilla,” and long afterward Frazier continued to express hurt and bitterness. If there was a supertitle to Ali’s operatic life, it was this: “I don’t have to be who you want me to be; I’m free to be who I want.” He made that statement the morning after he won his first heavyweight title. It informed every aspect of his life, including the way he boxed.
但是阿里也有虚伪的一面，至少是前后矛盾的一面。他说自己“为自己的种族而骄傲”，但却嘲笑其他非裔美国人的肤色、头发和体征，特别是嘲笑他的竞争对手与三次经典比赛中的对手乔·弗雷泽(Joe Frazier)，说他是“大猩猩”。很久以后，弗雷泽还常常表示自己受到了伤害，心怀怨恨。如果要给阿里歌剧般的一生加一行字幕，那一定会是“我用不着成为你们希望我成为的那个人，我想做什么样的人是我的自由”——这正是他第一次赢得重量级拳王称号之后的那个早上做出的宣言。一句话道出了他人生的方方面面，也包括他打拳的方式。
The traditionalist fight crowd was appalled by his style; he kept his hands too low, the critics said, and instead of allowing punches to “slip” past his head by bobbing and weaving, he leaned back from them.
他的拳击风格令传统拳击观众们震惊；评论家们说，他双拳举得太低，而且他也不靠上下左右晃动身体，让对方的拳头“滑过”自己的头部，而是靠身体后倾来躲避拳头。
Eventually his approach prevailed. Over 21 years, he won 56 fights and lost five. His Ali Shuffle may have been pure showboating, but the “rope-a-dope” — in which he rested on the ring’s ropes and let an opponent punch himself out — was the stratagem that won the Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman in 1974, the fight in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in which he regained his title.
最后，还是他的拳法占了上风。21年来，他在56场比赛中获胜，仅负五场。他的“阿里滑步”( Ali Shuffle)可能是纯粹的卖弄，但他的“倚绳”(rope-a-dope)策略——倚靠在拳台周围的绳索上，让对手自耗体力——让他1974年在扎伊尔（今刚果民主共和国）的“丛林之战”(Rumble in the Jungle)中战胜了乔治·福尔曼(George Foreman)，重获拳王称号。
His personal life was paradoxical. Ali belonged to a sect that emphasized strong families, a subject on which he lectured, yet he had dalliances as casual as autograph sessions. A brief first marriage to Sonji Roi ended in divorce after she refused to dress and behave as a proper Nation wife. (She died in 2005.) While married to Belinda Boyd, his second wife, Ali traveled openly with Veronica Porche, whom he later married. That marriage, too, ended in divorce.
他的个人生活充满矛盾之处。阿里属于一个重视强烈家庭纽带的教派，本人也喜欢做重视家庭的说教；但是他的感情生活就像签名活动那么随便。他的第一任妻子是宋吉·罗伊(Sonji Roi)， 由于她拒绝像一个标准的“国民好太太”那样穿衣和行事，两人很快离婚了（她于2005年逝世）。他的第二任妻子是布林达·波依德(Belinda Boyd)，但两人婚姻期间，阿里公开与维罗妮卡·波尔谢(Veronica Porche)一同旅行，后来他与波尔谢结婚，但那段婚姻同样以离婚告终。
Ali was politically and socially idiosyncratic as well. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the television interviewer David Frost asked him if he considered Al Qaeda and the Taliban evil. He replied that terrorism was wrong but that he had to “dodge questions like that” because “I have people who love me.” He said he had “businesses around the country” and an image to consider.
在政治与社会问题上，阿里同样特立独行。2001年9·11袭击之后，电视记者大卫·弗罗斯特(David Frost)问他，是否认为基地组织与塔利班是邪恶的。他回答，恐怖主义是错的，但是为了“那些爱我的人”，他必须“回避这样的问题”。他说自己“在全国都有生意”，并且要考虑形象问题。
As a spokesman for the Muhammad Ali Center, a museum dedicated to “respect, hope and understanding,” which opened in his hometown, Louisville, in 2005, he was known to interrupt a fund-raising meeting with an ethnic joke. In one he said: “If a black man, a Mexican and a Puerto Rican are sitting in the back of a car, who’s driving? Give up? The po-lice.”
2005年，穆罕默德·阿里中心在他的家乡路易斯维尔剪彩，这座博物馆的宗旨是“尊敬、希望与理解”。但作为该中心的发言人，他却在一次筹款会上大讲种族主义笑话。他的一个笑话是这么说的：“如果一个黑人、一个墨西哥人和一个波多黎各人并排坐在汽车后座，那么开车的是谁？猜不着？是警察。”
But Ali had generated so much good will by then that there was little he could say or do that would change the public’s perception of him.
但那时，阿里已经赢得了那么多好感，无论他说什么、做什么，都无法改变公众对他的看法。
“We forgive Muhammad Ali his excesses,” an Ali biographer, Dave Kindred, wrote, “because we see in him the child in us, and if he is foolish or cruel, if he is arrogant, if he is outrageously in love with his reflection, we forgive him because we no more can condemn him than condemn a rainbow for dissolving into the dark. Rainbows are born of thunderstorms, and Muhammad Ali is both.”
“我们原谅穆罕默德·阿里的过分言行，”阿里的一位传记作者戴夫·金德里德(Dave Kindred)写道，“因为我们在他身上看到了我们自己内心的孩子。如果他是愚蠢或残忍的，如果他是傲慢的，如果他狂热地自恋，我们也会原谅他。我们不能因为彩虹会消散在黑暗之中，就去责备彩虹；我们同样也不能责备他。彩虹诞生于雷雨，而穆罕默德·阿里既是那场狂暴的雷雨，又是雷雨之后的那道彩虹。”
