A hard rain was falling on a summer’s day in 2009 when the call came into the police in the New Jersey shore community of Long Branch.

2009年夏天的一天，当新泽西海岸区朗布兰奇(Long Branch)的警局接到电话时，外面正下着暴雨。

A dishevelled old man had been spotted walking around in the storm and staring into the windows of a vacant house with a for sale on it.

有人看到一个头发凌乱的老人在暴风雨中游荡，盯着一套贴着在售标志的空房的窗户往里看。

A 24-year-old officer was sent to investigate and found a strangely saturated senior citizen at the scene.

一名24岁的女警官被派去查看，她在现场发现了一个浑身湿透的奇怪老人。

Dressed in a hooded raincoat and black sweat pants stuffed into his boots, he carried no identification and told a tale that seemed to be on the tall side.

他身着连帽雨衣和黑色运动裤，裤腿塞进靴子里，他未随身携带任何身份证件，说的话也让人难以相信。

I asked him what his name was and he said, ‘Bob Dylan’, said the officer, Kristie Buble.

我问他叫什么，他说，‘鲍勃•迪伦(Bob Dylan)’。

Now, I’ve seen pictures of Bob Dylan from a long time ago and he didn’t look like Bob Dylan to me at all . . . I wasn’t sure if he came from one of our hospitals or something.

警官克里斯蒂•布勃莱(Kristie Buble)称，好吧，我很久以前见过鲍勃•迪伦的照片，在我看来那个人一点都不像鲍勃•迪伦……我当时不确定他是不是从哪家医院或其他类似地方跑出来的。

Indulging the soaked-through fellow, the officer put him in her car and took him to the place where he said his tour bus was parked.

这位女警官没有为难那位浑身湿透的老人，她把他带到车上，送他去他说他的旅游车停放的地方。

There, she found out that this Bob Dylan was the real McCoy — a discovery that made its way into the newspapers and provoked considerable amusement about the lack of historical consciousness among the US generations that followed the baby boomers.

在那里，她发现这位鲍勃•迪伦就是本尊——这个发现登上了报纸，引发了不少对美国婴儿潮后的几代人缺乏历史意识的调侃。

This week, the hooded wanderer seen in Long Branch was back in the news because the Swedish Academy selected him as the 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, raising again the question of what to make of him.

上周，这位曾出现在朗布兰奇的穿着连帽雨衣的流浪汉再次出现在新闻报道中，因为瑞典文学院(Swedish Academy)将他选为2016年诺贝尔文学奖(Nobel Prize for Literature)得主。这再次引发了该如何看待他的问题。

The Swedish authorities knew Dylan well and honoured him for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.

瑞典文学院很了解鲍勃•迪伦，嘉奖他在美国歌曲的伟大传统中开创了新的诗性表达。

Theirs was the Dylan who became the voice of his generation, expressing the young’s unease with the conformity of the postwar era and providing the poetry that animated the fights for civil rights and against the Vietnam war.

他们眼中的鲍勃•迪伦是这样一个人：为他那一代人发声，表达年轻人对战后时代的循规蹈矩的不安，创作的诗歌激励了人们争取公民权利的抗争以及反对越战运动。

But the furtive fellow picked up by the police in New Jersey deserves to be part of the story, too.

但当时被新泽西警察局带走的那个鬼鬼祟祟的人也应该成为故事的一部分。

For if there is one thing that has typified the former Robert Allen Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, in recent decades it has been his resistance to being too closely identified with the pop star version of Bob Dylan.

因为，最近几十年，来自明尼苏达州希宾(Hibbing)、本名罗伯特•艾伦•齐默尔曼(Robert Allen Zimmerman)的他身上最典型的特征，就是他对与流行歌手鲍勃•迪伦这一身份过于紧密地联系在一起的抵制。

Now 75, Dylan still seems to live by the credo he set forth in his magisterial 1964 song, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding): He not busy being born is busy dying.

如今已经75岁的迪伦，似乎仍然在依照他在1964年的经典歌曲《没事儿，妈妈（我不过是在流血）》(It’s Alright, Ma(I’m Only Bleeding))中提出的信条生活——没在忙着出生的人就在忙着死去(He not busy being born is busy dying)。

His challenge has been that so many fans treat such words as if they were scriptural — as president-to-be Jimmy Carter seemed to do when he referenced the lyric at the 1976 Democratic convention in a bid to curry favour with younger voters.

他的难题一直是，太多的粉丝把这些歌词当作圣经来对待——就像之前尚未当选总统的吉米•卡特(Jimmy Carter)在1976年的民主党全国代表大会上，为了迎合年轻选民而引用迪伦的歌词时那样。

Following his period of pop stardom, Dylan quickly began turning away from the legions of people turning to him as their oracle.

在流行歌星的人生阶段过去之后，迪伦开始迅速远离那些把他视为神明的人。

Whatever the counterculture was, I had seen enough of it, he wrote in his memoir — Chronicles: Volume One — of his state of mind by the late 1960s.

不管反主流文化是什么，我都看够了，在回忆录《编年史》（Chronicles: Volume One，较早的一个中文版名为《像一块滚石》）中，他这样描述自己在1960年代末之前的思想状态。

I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese.

我厌倦了我的歌词被揣测，歌词的意义形成了论战，我被神化成了‘反叛的大佬’(Big Bubba of Rebellion)、‘抗议的大祭司’(High Priest of Protest)、‘异见的沙皇’(Czar of Dissent)、‘不服从的公爵’(Duke of Disobedience)、‘寄生虫的领袖’(Leader of the Freeloaders)、‘叛教之皇’(Kaiser of Apostasy)、‘无政府主义的大主教’(Archbishop of Anarchy)和‘大人物’(Big Cheese)。

The solution in recent years has been what he calls the Never-Ending Tour, with Dylan hiding in plain sight as a wandering minstrel, maintaining the musical flame carried before him by such heroes as Woody Guthrie and Big Bill Broonzy (his journeys have included visits to the old homes of other songwriters — leading to speculation that his mission in Long Branch was to see a house there that had once been occupied by Bruce Springsteen).

近年来，他的解决办法是他所说的永无止境的旅行(Never-Ending Tour)——迪伦像游吟诗人一样隐藏在大庭广众之中，传承伍迪•格思里(Woody Guthrie)和大比尔•布伦齐(Big Bill Broonzy)等前辈曾传递过的音乐火焰（他的旅程包括拜访其他词曲作家的故居，这让人们猜测他去朗布兰奇是想看一看布鲁斯•斯普林斯廷(Bruce Springsteen)曾经住过的房子）。

These songs didn’t come out of thin air, he said at a music industry gathering in Los Angeles last year.

这些歌不是凭空诞生的，去年他在洛杉矶的一场音乐行业盛会上表示，

I learnt lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs . . . sang nothing but these folk songs and they gave me the code for everything that’s fair game.

我从听民谣中学习了歌词以及如何撰写歌词……只唱这些民谣，它们给了我一切可抒写对象的密码。

The results are not meant to be easily understood.

以这种方式写出的歌曲注定不能轻易被理解。

These songs of mine, they’re like mystery stories, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up, Mr Dylan said.

我的那些歌，就像莎士比亚成长时期所看过的那类神秘故事，迪伦称，

They were on the fringes then, and I think they’re on the fringes now.

当时它们就属于边缘，我认为它们现在仍然属于边缘。

And they sound like they’ve been on the hard ground.

它们听起来像是一直在硬邦邦的地面上。

Not everyone thinks that merits a Nobel.

并非所有人都认为这配得上得诺贝尔奖。

More conventional literary types wondered why the Swedish committee failed to recognise writers — such as New Jersey’s native son Philip Roth — known for publishing books rather than cutting records and doing shows.

较传统的文学人士想知道为何瑞典文学院未嘉奖一些因著书而闻名的作家——比如新泽西土生土长的菲利普•罗斯(Philip Roth)——而是选择了以出唱片和演出为主的歌手。

Some critics detected the hand of self-indulgent, self-involved baby boomers.

一些批评人士认为这是自我纵容、以自我为中心的婴儿潮一代的手笔。

I’m a Dylan fan, tweeted Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting, but this is an ill-conceived nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies.

我不是迪伦粉，苏格兰小说家、《猜火车》(Trainspotting)的作者欧文•韦尔什(Irvine Welsh)在Twitter上写道，但这是从语无伦次的老嬉皮士发臭的前列腺扭下来的一个欠妥的怀旧奖项。

In a way, the controversy showed that Dylan has not lost his touch.

在某种程度上，这种争议表明了迪伦宝刀未老。

He has a talent for inspiring mixed feelings.

他拥有激发起复杂感情的天赋。

Anyone who likes him at all has a relationship with him . . . that’s just about as personal as any they have with the people they actually know, Richard Hell, the punk rock pioneer, wrote in a recent collection of nonfiction.

每一个确实喜欢他的人都和他存在关系……这种关系就像他们与真正认识的人之间的关系那样私人，朋克摇滚先驱理查德•黑尔(Richard Hell)在最近的散文集中写道，

He’s been that useful, meaningful and exasperating all your life long.

在你有生之年中，他一直都是那么有用、有意义、又令人恼火。

Still working things out intellectually with Dylan himself, Mr Hell, 67, said he was pleased to see him win the Nobel.

仍然和迪伦本人一起解决脑力问题的黑尔现年67岁，他称，很高兴看到迪伦赢得诺贝尔奖。

You have to smile, he told the Financial Times.

你必须微笑，他向英国《金融时报》表示，

He’s an incomparable genius.

他是个无与伦比的天才。

Yet a part of the old New York punk wondered whether the new Nobel laureate might turn his back on the academy once again — and take a walk.

不过这位纽约老朋克也有一点儿好奇，想知道这位新诺奖得主又会不会拒绝瑞典文学院，独自走开。

It would be funny, Mr Hell said, if he refused it.

这会很有趣，赫尔称，如果他拒绝领奖。