They knew him by his rib. “When I saw thatrib – I thought, ‘We've found [him] at last!’,” forensic expert FranciscoExteberría told NPR. He had noticed the letters MC on a fragment of the coffin;the flayed rib and the crippled left arm picked up in the Battle of Lepanto.

他们从肋骨认出了他。法医弗朗西斯科（Francisco Exteberría）告诉美国国家公共电台（NPR）：“看到那根肋骨时，我想，我们终于找到（他）了！”他注意到，棺材碎片上的字母MC；皮肉剥落的肋骨以及勒班陀战役中致残的左臂。

It was 2015. Deep in the sub-soil of a17th-Century convent’s grounds, operating quietly so as not to disturb the 12cloistered nuns who live there in silence, the team of archaeologists andforensic anthropologists had uncovered the remains of at least 15 people –before theycame across the splintered coffin.

当时已是2015 年。这支由考古学家、法医人类学家组成的团队在一座17 世纪修道院深深的地下安静地操作，以免打扰到隐居于此静静生活的12 名修女。在发现这个裂成碎片的棺材前，他们还至少发现了15 具遗骨。

“The whole team was there in silence, underground, studying what wefound – and we all knew.” Even before he received the results from the DNAanalysis, Exteberría was sure. In the crypt beneath Madrid’s Convent of theBarefoot Trinitarians lay the skeleton of the great Spanish writer, Miguel deCervantes.

“整个团队都在地下静静地研究我们发现的东西——我们都知道我们发现了什么。”即使在得到DNA 检验结果之前，弗朗西斯科对结果就很肯定。在马德里赤足三一教徒修道院（Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians）的地下墓穴里，安放着西班牙伟大作家米格尔·德·塞万提斯（Miguel de Cervantes）的遗骸。

In 1575, after fighting in militarycampaigns against the Turks in the Mediterranean, the Spaniard was captured byBarbary pirates and taken to Algiers. There, he was kept as a slave for fiveyears. When he was freed – with a ransom raised by Trinitarian friars attachedto the convent he was to be buried beneath –he had become theman who would write one of the greatest novels in history.

1575 年，在参加西班牙与土耳其的地中海军事战役后，这位西班牙人被巴巴里海盗抓获，随后被带到阿尔及尔。在那里，他度过了五年囚徒时光。被解救后（依靠修道院三一教徒筹集的赎金，他的遗体就被埋葬在这座修道院地下），他成为小说家，写出了史上最伟大的小说之一。

“His five-year captivity in Algiers left an indelible impression onhis fiction,” Cervantes scholar María Antonia Garcés tells BBC Culture. “Fromthe first works written after his liberation, such as the play Life in Algiers(c. 1581-1583) and his novel La Galatea (1585), to his posthumous book TheTrials of Persiles and Sigismunda (1617), the story of this traumaticexperience continuously speaks through his work.”

研究塞万提斯的学者玛丽亚·安东尼娅·加尔塞斯（María Antonia Garcés）向BBC 文化事务记者表示，“在阿尔及尔度过的五年囚禁岁月，在他的小说中留下了难以磨灭的印记。从他重获自由后创作的最早一批作品中，如戏剧《生活在阿尔及尔》（Life in Algiers）(约1581-1583) 和小说《伽拉泰亚》（La Galatea）(1585), 再到他的遗作《贝尔西雷斯和西希斯蒙达历险记》（The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda）(1617), 这段惨痛的经历都屡屡出现其中。”

Life-saving literature

拯救生命的文学作品

Garcés, who is professor of Hispanicstudies at Cornell University, understands the trauma of captivity. BetweenDecember 1982 and July 1983, she was held hostage by a guerrilla group inColombia. “I have always read intensely and found solace in literature,” shesays. “I survived my captivity, I think, thanks to some of the books my captorsbrought me, which I requested, including a decrepit Spanish translation ofOscar Wilde’s Complete Works… When I had nothing to read, I read a LarousseSpanish Dictionary from top to bottom. The marvel of words has alwaysfascinated me.”

康奈尔大学西班牙研究教授加尔塞斯（Garcés）深知囚禁带给人的心理创伤。1982 年12 月至1983 年7 月期间，她曾被哥伦比亚游击队作为人质关押。她表示，“我总是不停地阅读，希望在文学中找到了慰藉。我想，我能熬过了这段囚禁岁月，要多亏我要求看守带给我的一些书，其中包括《奥斯卡·王尔德全集》的西班牙语译本......在无书可读时，我就把拉鲁斯的西班牙语词典从头读到尾。奇妙的语句总是让我着迷。”

I survived my captivity, I think, thanks tothe books my captors brought me. My love of literature kept me alive –María AntoniaGarcés

她也阅读塞万提斯的作品，她认为，是塞万提斯帮助她在随后几年活了下来。在获释后，加尔塞斯开始研究塞万提斯的作品。她表示，“在获得自由、重获新生后，我成为一名学者。我是幸存者。在长达七个月的囚禁中，我被锁在一个狭小、无窗的牢房中，时刻有武装狱卒看守，常常受到绑架者的死亡威胁。对文学的热爱帮助我活了下来。我希望充分利用我的余生......于是，我这样做了，现在我成了一名研究塞万提斯的学者。”

She also read Cervantes, whom she creditswith helping her survive in the following years. After her release, Garcésbegan to study his work. “I became a scholar after getting a new lease of life,after being liberated,” she says. “I was a survivor, after seven months ofcaptivity, where I was locked in a tiny, windowless cell, constantly guarded byarmed jailers and often threatened with death by my kidnappers. My love ofliterature kept me alive, and I wanted to make the most of what remained of mylife… I have done this by becoming a scholar and working on Cervantes.”

加尔塞斯2005 年的著作《塞万提斯在阿尔及尔》（Cervantes in Algiers）：这是一个被囚禁者的故事，它探讨了这样的观点：有创伤经历的幸存者都有一种复述自己经历的冲动。

Garcés’s 2005 book Cervantes in Algiers: ACaptive’s Tale explores the idea that survivors of traumatic events have anurge to repeat their stories. She describes how Cervantes told and retold hisown account of enslavement: in plays, poetry and novellas including The EnglishSpanish Girl and The Liberal Lover, as well as what Garcés calls “Cervantes’s mostimportant autobiographical narrative” –the tale told by acaptive in Part 1 of Don Quixote.

她描述了塞万提斯怎样一再讲述自己被奴役的经历：在戏剧、诗歌和小说中处处可见，其中包括《英格兰的西班牙女孩》（The English Spanish Girl）、《自由的情人》（The LiberalLover），还有加尔塞斯所称的“塞万提斯最重要的自传叙事”——《堂吉诃德》第一部分中一个被俘者所讲的故事。

Repeat to survive

重复才能活下来

This need for repetition tallies with theexperiences of other traumatised individuals. In Bearing Witness or theVicissitudes of Listening, which is based on interviews with Holocaustsurvivors, Yale psychiatry professor Dori Laub states that the subject oftrauma “lives in its grip and unwittingly undergoes its ceaseless repetitionsand reenactments.” Trauma survivors, argues Laub, “live not with memories ofthe past, but with an event that could not and did not proceed through to itscompletion, has no ending, attained no closure, and therefore, as far as itssurvivors are concerned, continues into the present and is current in everyrespect.”

这种重复讲述行为也符合其他创伤个体的体验。在《见证或聆听人世沧桑》（Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening）一文中，耶鲁大学精神病学教授劳德瑞（Dori Laub）指出，创伤主体“生活在创伤控制中，会不自觉地不断重复并重现创伤”。该文建立在对大屠杀幸存者的访谈基础之上。劳德瑞认为，创伤幸存者“并不是生活在过去的记忆中，而是他们不去也无法了结创伤，创伤无法结束，无法终止，因此，就创伤幸存者而言，创伤就会继续在各个方面与其如影随形。”