婚禮歡愉化作婚後憂鬱

It was after midnight when Kaitlin Chad Moss, her new husband, Jeremy Moss, and a handful of devoted wedding guests lingered as long as they could before they were politely informed that the celebration was over and it was time to go home.

凱特琳·查德·莫斯，她的新婚丈夫耶利米·莫斯，以及一些死忠的婚禮賓客流連不去，直到被禮貌地告知慶祝活動己然結束，該回家了，而這時已過了午夜。

“That’s when it hit me,” said Kaitlin Moss, 29, who was married in September last year at the Green Valley Ranch, a lodge and events space in Coram, Montana. “I’m never going to have everyone I love in one room like this again. It was hard to accept. I felt sad, and it didn’t go away.”

現年29歲、去年九月在蒙大拿州科拉姆旅館暨活動會館「格林山谷牧場」結婚的凱特琳．莫斯女士說：「就在那一刻我驀然驚覺，我再也不能讓我所愛的人像這樣全部歡聚一堂了。這令人難以接受。我感到悲傷，而且悲傷並未散去。」

Kaitlin Moss broke down that night in front of her girlfriends. “I wish someone had warned me that this was something you could feel. Why is no one talking about this?” said Kaitlin Moss, who lives in Denver.

當天晚上，凱特琳·莫斯在女性友人面前崩潰了。住在丹佛的凱特琳·莫斯說：「真希望事先有人警告我，我可能會有這種感受。為什麼沒人談到這檔事呢？」

Post-wedding sadness is not uncommon among the newly married. Laura Stafford, a professor and director of the Bowling Green State University’s School of Media and Communication, and Allison Scott Gordon, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky’s Department of Communication, have jointly conducted two studies on depression, specifically concerning newly married women.

婚禮後悲傷在新婚夫婦中並不少見。兩位學者針對新婚女性聯手進行了兩項關於憂鬱症的研究，這兩位學者是鮑

史塔福德說：「這些女人是關注的焦點，且籌備一場婚禮占用了很多時間，沒有某種失落是很奇怪的。我們還發現人們關注婚禮甚於婚姻。她們對於目標、作為妻子的角色、關係跟伴侶的選擇，也都存在不確定感。」

“In 2016 we looked at 28 women, half of whom said they felt sad or let down after their wedding,” Stafford said. Last year they interviewed 158 women. Twelve percent of the women interviewed in the second study expressed feelings of depression after being wedded.

林格陵州立大學媒體與傳播學院教授兼主任蘿拉·史塔福德，與肯塔基大學傳播系副教授艾莉森·史考特·戈登。

史塔福德說：「我們在2016年調查了28名女性，其中一半表示在婚禮後感到悲傷或失落。」他們去年又調查了158名女性，在這第二項研究中，12％受訪女性表示在婚後有憂鬱感。

“These women were the center of attention, and planning a wedding takes up so much of your time, it would be weird to not feel some kind of letdown,” Stafford said. “We also found there was more focus on the wedding than on the marriage. There was also uncertainty about their goals, their role as a wife, their relationship and partner choice.”

史塔福德說：「這些女人是關注的焦點，且籌備一場婚禮占用了很多時間，沒有某種失落是很奇怪的。我們還發現人們關注婚禮甚於婚姻。她們對於目標、作為妻子的角色、關係跟伴侶的選擇，也都存在不確定感。」

The pair are working on a third study where the same 158 women will be interviewed again to see if their moods have changed a year later.

這兩位學者正在進行第三項研究，將再次採訪同一群158名女性，看看一年後她們的心境是否有所改變。

There are many reasons behind the emotional crash. For some, it’s returning to everyday life. For others, it’s the elimination of planning and anticipating such a big celebration or the loss of looking forward to that cultural, life-altering event. Then there’s the diminished attention, social letdown and the pressures and expectations that come with your new life and spouse.

情緒崩潰背後有很多原因。對一些人而言，是因為又回到了平常生活，對另一些人來說，則是因為對於如此盛典的籌畫與期待俱已成為過去，或是失去了對於那個文化性的、改變人生的事件的期待。另外還有不再那麼受到人們注目、社交失落感，以及新的生活和配偶帶來的壓力和期望。

“For most, this kind of sadness is temporary,” said Elizabeth Sloan, a licensed professional counselor in McLean, Virginia, who added that these melancholy feelings generally lessen during the months that follow your wedding. “First talk to other married friends, then talk to your spouse,” she said.

維吉尼亞州麥連郡有執照的專業顧問伊莉莎白．史隆說：「對大多數人來說，這種悲傷是暫時的。」她表示這些憂鬱的情緒通常會在婚後幾個月裡轉淡，「先跟其他已婚朋友談談，再跟你的配偶談談。」

說文解字看新聞

標題小玩押頭韻（alliteration）的文字遊戲（bells和blues的b）。Hear wedding bells是認為某人好事將近，注意不加冠詞。Wedded bliss指源自結婚的幸福美滿感，屬於詼諧的講法。

Wedding指結婚儀式，marriage是婚姻狀態。談論結婚這檔事時，通常用get married而非marriage。例如，兩小無猜結婚嫌太早，英文會說：I think they’re too young to get married.而非I think they’re too young for marriage. 「婚姻生活」是married life，不是marriage life。

對某些人來說，婚禮愈是風光浪漫，婚後面對每天開門七件事（returning to everyday life）的情緒崩壞（emotional crash）就更嚴重，crash可用collapse或breakdown替換。

作者使用sadness/ depression/letdown/melancholy等意義大同小異的字來說明post-wedding blues，避免重複。如何面對憂鬱？浪漫主義詩人濟慈（John Keats）的名作Ode on Melancholy（「憂鬱頌」）值得玩味。

船民哀歌 搬上歌劇舞台

Off the coast of Sicily, a rickety boat of migrants is in distress. Tossed by waves and drenched, women and children scream as a voice barks, “Jump and swim!” They do, but — as history shows — not everyone will make it.

在西西里島海岸外，一艘搖搖欲墜的移民船陷入了困境。船隻在海浪中載浮載沉，全身濕透的婦孺們尖叫著，有個聲音說道：「跳船游泳吧！」他們照做了，但一如歷史所呈現的，並非每個人都能活下來。

This is the tragically familiar journey that has been made across the Mediterranean by countless migrants fleeing war and famine in recent times. But instead of transpiring in the sea between Italy and Libya, this scene was being enacted on the stage of the Teatro Massimo, an opera house in the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

這是近來無數穿越地中海逃離戰爭與飢荒的移民，悲慘而又熟悉的一段旅程，但這一幕不是在義大利跟利比亞之間的海上發生，而是在西西里島首府巴勒莫的馬西莫劇院舞台上演出。

Co-produced by the theater and by the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, “Winter Journey,” which had its world premiere in Palermo earlier this month, tells the story of desperate migration from troubled, war-torn countries to Europe.

由該劇院及那不勒斯聖卡洛劇院聯合製作的《冬季之旅》，本月稍早在巴勒莫全球首演，冷淡地講述從陷入困境、飽受戰爭蹂躪的國家遷徙至歐洲的故事。

“It is a journey toward a country where they will find hostility, a cold welcome or perhaps no welcome at all, to a place where there is a winter of the soul,” said Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi, who wrote the score of the opera to a libretto by Irish novelist Colm Toibin. “It is a journey to a hostile world,” Einaudi said, “in which your soul can die.”

義大利鋼琴家兼作曲家魯多維科．艾諾第說：「這是通往某個國家的一趟旅程，到了那兒他們會發現敵意，冷淡的歡迎，或是根本不歡迎，那兒存在著靈魂的冬季。」他為愛爾蘭小說家科姆·托賓的劇本譜寫了歌劇的音樂。艾諾第說：「這是一個通往具有敵意的世界的旅程，你的靈魂可能在那裡死去。」

The story is told from the perspective of three characters: a man from an unnamed country moving from hardship to hardship as he seeks a better life in Europe, and the woman and child he has left behind. The choir serves as a Greek chorus, while a politician (a speaking role) intervenes intermittently with refrains that will be familiar to many European ears: “The boat cannot dock at our port,” “Why should we deal with this problem?” and, “We do not want strangers on our streets.”

而故事是從三個人物的角度講述：一個來自未指名的國家、歷經一段段艱辛來到歐洲尋求更好生活的男子，以及他丟下的女人和孩子。合唱團充當希臘旁白歌隊，而一位政治人物（一個只講話的角色）則斷斷續續使用許多歐洲人耳熟能詳的話插嘴說「船不能停靠在我們的港口」、「我們為什麼要處理這個問題？」及「我們不想讓異鄉人出現在我們的街道上」。

Toibin said in a telephone interview that the work was “a simple story, almost a folk tale,” in which the main characters “sing their own stories,” focusing on the personal to “stir emotions.” But “Winter Journey” is not a simple call for open borders, he said. “Even though it is clear where my sympathies lie, I am alert to the complexity of the argument, and that has to be registered.”

托賓接受電話訪問時說，這部作品是「一個簡單的故事，接近於民間故事」，當中主要角色「唱著自己的故事」，專注於個人來「激起情緒」，但他表示《冬季之旅》並不是個要求開放邊界的單純呼籲。「儘管我同情誰不言可喻，但我也深知這個論題的複雜性，這一點必須表明。」

The project was hatched in late 2017, when the theater asked Einaudi and Palermo-born film and stage director Roberto Andò to come up with an opera about migration.

此劇的策劃始於2017年底，當時劇院要求伊諾第跟巴勒莫出生的電影暨舞台導演羅貝托．安度一起創作一部關於移民的歌劇。

In an interview, Andò described the work as a eulogy, of sorts, for “the Europe that was and isn’t anymore. A world that we hoped had more strength and instead risks faltering.”

安度受訪時表示，這部作品或可視為一首輓歌，用以悼念「曾經存在，卻已不復存在的歐洲。一個我們希望更堅實有力，卻有衰微之虞的世界」。