Whale in, dinosaur out at the Natural History Museum in London

恐龙走了，蓝鲸来了

When God speaks from the whirlwind to Job, he offers as evidence of his potency［慎用］his creation of animals of a titanic size. Two in particular get aname-check. There is Leviathan, the monster of the deeps; and Behemoth. “He moveth his tail like a cedar,” God boasts. “His bones are like bars of iron.” True wonder, the Bible tells us, is to contemplate just how massive a creature can grow.当上帝在旋风中与约伯(Job)说话的时候，他把创造体型庞大的动物作为神迹的证明。其中有两个尤其有据可考。一个是深海怪兽利维坦(Leviathan)，另一个就是比蒙(Behemoth)。上帝夸耀称：“它的尾巴如杉木般挺直，骨骼如铜铁般坚硬。”《圣经》告诉我们，真正的奇迹是思考一个生物怎么能长那么大。

This is certainly a lesson that generations of visitors to the Natural History Museum in London have been happy to absorb. For more than a century, its most famous exhibit has been its cast of a colossal dinosaur.这当然是100多年来参观伦敦自然历史博物馆(Natural History Museum)的人们乐于听取的讲解。一个多世纪以来，该博物馆最著名的展品一直是体型庞大的恐龙骨架。

With its long neck and even longer tail, Diplodocus was built on a scale that［从句］no land animal today can begin to rival. To gawp at the 21m long sauropod, and then buy a model of it in the museum shop, was an essential rite of passage for the dinosaur-obsessed British child. No wonder, then, that its removal from the main hall of the museum, before a national tour, should have inspired a widespread surge of nostalgia and affection.梁龙(Diplodocus)的脖子很长，而尾巴更长，它的体型是当今任何陆生动物都无法匹敌的。目瞪口呆地看着这具21米长的恐龙骨架，然后在博物馆商店买一个模型，对于痴迷于恐龙的英国小孩是必不可少的成年礼。因此当馆方决定将这具骨架从中央大厅移出，以便在全国巡展的消息传出时，人们普遍感到怀旧和亲切就不足为奇了。

这就是当年的龙龙

媒体、甚至伦敦自然历史博物馆本身一直把这具恐龙骨架宣传为“迪皮”(Dippy)。正如不得不耐着性子看完《紫色小恐龙班尼》(Barney and Friends)的父母将会知道的那样，恐龙经常被匪夷所思地打上可爱和甜蜜的烙印。The press, and even the Natural History Museum, have been busily marketing the skeleton as Dippy. Dinosaurs, as any parent who has had to sit through Barney and Friends will know, are weirdly prone to being rebranded as cuddly and saccharine.

当然，中生代(Mesozoic era)的现实生活不会那么温馨，这一点几乎无需指出，也未必需要成年了才会明白这一点。That the reality of life in the Mesozoic era tended not towards the amiable hardly needs pointing out, of course — nor is it necessary to be an adult to appreciate this.

我从亲身经历知道，对一个孩子来说，看到梁龙这样庞大的恐龙骨架会让他们首次得到崇高的体验：在刹那间领悟到宇宙有多么奇妙。若有谁对如此壮丽动人的景物无动于衷，那才是灵魂麻木。I speak personally when I say that, for a child, the spectacle of an immense skeleton like that of Diplodocus can provide a first experience of the sublime: a sudden and overwhelming appreciation of just how strange the universe can be. Dull would he be of soul who could pass by a sight so awesome in its majesty.

不得不加上一句，镀金时代［注］纽约的实业家也够麻木的，他们竟然对眼皮底下如此壮丽动人的景象无动于衷，没有意识到这是一个扣人心弦的宣传良机。Dull too, it is only fair to add, would have been the industrialist in Gilded Age New York who could have passed by a sight so awesome in its majesty, and not recognise in it a sensational opportunity for self-promotion.

注：镀金时代，1887-1889，发生在南北战争结束后，这一时期美国国内局势保持了长期稳定，随着工业经济迅猛发展，资本主义经济由自由竞争向寡头垄断过渡，大量财富集中于少数垄断资本家手中，大财团、大富豪不断涌现。特点：国内经济开始起飞；大企业逐渐形成；社会进一步走向自由和开放；外交孤立政策形成；新闻报刊业急剧膨胀等。

按照林奈氏命名法，“迪皮”的全称是卡内基梁龙(Diplodocus carnegii)，这透露了伦敦自然历史博物馆的这件镇馆之宝实际上是美国舶来品。安德鲁•卡内基(Andrew Carnegie)对庞然大物的喜爱使得他在1898年几乎垄断了美国钢铁业——并且出资在怀俄明的化石床寻找“地球上史上最庞大动物”的遗骸。That Dippy’s full Linnaean nomenclature is Diplodocus carnegii betrays the fact that this icon of the Natural History Museum is in reality an American import. It was Andrew Carnegie’s relish for gigantism that had enabled him, by 1898, to create a virtual monopoly in the US steel industry — and to sponsor, in the fossil-beds of Wyoming, a search for the remains of the “most colossal animal ever on earth”.

卡内基梁龙便是考古发掘的结果。这具于1905年送往伦敦的恐龙骨架表明，就在工业霸主地位由旧世界转移到新世界的同时，古生物学研究的领军位置也传给了新世界。Diplodocus carnegii was the result. The cast sent in 1905 to London signalled that, just as industrial supremacy was passing from the Old World to the New, so too was the lead in palaeontological research.

伦敦自然历史博物馆最初的建馆是由理查德•欧文(Richard Owen)监管的，此人心眼不好、但却是出色的自然学家，他最早发明了恐龙这个词。卡内基的礼物使这座博物馆具备显赫地位。这具带着长尾巴的恐龙骨架，标志着“美国世纪”来到了伦敦南肯辛顿区(South Kensington)。The original museum building had been supervised by Richard Owen, the malevolent but brilliant naturalist who had first coined the word dinosaur. Carnegie’s gift served to put the institution emphatically in its place. The American century, snaking tail and all, had arrived in South Kensington.

换句话说，恐龙很少仅仅是恐龙。梁龙的庞大骨架使得它常常被用来比喻。A dinosaur, in other words, is rarely just a dinosaur. Vastness on the scale of a diplodocuslends itself too readily to the metaphorical for that.

当赫尔曼•梅尔维尔(Herman Melville)在小说中描写到一种庞大生物时，他承认对于自己描写的大白鲸形象作为一种强大象征感到不堪重负。When Herman Melville wrote his novel about a creature no less titanic, he confessed himself overwhelmed by the potency of his great white whale as a symbol.

利维坦 的长相：概念图

“只是把我对于这个利维坦的想法写下来，就令我疲惫不堪、虚弱无力。”《白鲸》(Moby Dick)可以解释，在灾难威胁世界的巨型动物的背景下，为何比蒙如今应该给海怪利维坦让路。“For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint.” Moby Dick serves to explain why it is right that Behemoth should now, in the shadow of the cataclysm overwhelming the world’s megafauna, make way for Leviathan.

和“迪皮”一样，将要入住自然历史博物馆中央大厅的蓝鲸骨架，不仅会令人叹为观止，还会发人深思。如果说梁龙让目瞪口呆的参观者能够见证已经灭绝的动物，那么体重超过史上最庞大的恐龙的蓝鲸将提供见证濒危动物的机会。Like Dippy, the skeleton of the blue whale that will soon be taking up residency in the entrance hall of the Natural History Museum, is a stimulus to wonder but also to reflection. If Diplodocus offers the stupefied visitor an emblem of extinction, then the blue whale, a creature heavier than the heaviest dinosaur that ever existed, offers an emblem of extinction threatening.

是时候让它成为自然历史博物馆的镇馆之宝了。Its time to serve as the icon of the Natural History Museum has come.

本文作者著有《王朝：凯撒家族的兴衰》(Dynasty: the Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar)

The writer is author of Dynasty: the Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar