传统与个人才能 (中英对照)(转载)

—— 传统与个人才能 (中英对照)(转载)

来源:建筑师forca的旅行笔记 \\ 作者: 诗王 \\ 朝代:近现代 \\ 栏目: 现代诗歌 \\ 人气: \\ 更新:2019-07-22

T.S.艾略特自然不必介绍, 除了是一位诗人,还是一位著名的文学评论家。他的《传统和个人才能》为建筑界所知,因为Robert Venturi在他著名的《建筑的矛盾性与复杂性》一书中,援引了艾略特的这篇发人深省的文章。

所以我找来了中英文对照的原文,一边学习艾略特犀利深邃的观点,一边欣赏大师优美的文字。

中文由翻译界的泰斗,已经仙逝的李赋宁老人家翻译,信达雅具足,和原文相得益彰。

—— forca

传统与个人才能

T.S.艾略特

Tradition and the Inpidual Talent

by T. S. Eliot

李赋宁 译

出自

在英语写作中,我们很少谈到传统,尽管我们偶尔也使用这个名词来惋惜传 统的消失。我们提不出“这一传统”或“某一传统”。充其量我们只使用它的形 容词来描述某某人的诗歌是“传统的”,或者甚至是“太传统了”。或许,除非用 作贬义,这个词就很罕见。假若不是这样,该词就带有隐约的褒义,暗示着:受称赞的作品具有某种讨人喜欢的考古学文物重建的兴趣。你不可能使这个词让英 国人听起来感到舒服,除非使它与鼓舞人心的考古科学发生这种赏心悦目的联 系。

IN English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to “the tradition” or to “a tradition”; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of So-and-so is “traditional” or even “too traditional.” Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing arch?ological reconstruction. You can hardly make the word agreeable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archology.

在我们对活着的或已故的作家所做的鉴赏文章里,传统这个词肯定不会出

现。每一个国家,每一个民族,都不仅有自己的创作习惯,而且还有自己的文学 批评的习性。与创作天才方面的缺点和局限相比,本民族文学批评习惯方面的缺 点和局限,更容易为人忽视。基于用法语写的大量的文学批评文章,我们理解、 或认为我们理解法国人的文学批评方法或习惯。由此我们就简单地得出这一结论 (我们竟然会这样没有头脑),即法国人比我们“更富于批评精神”,而且我们有 时也颇以此自豪,似乎法国人比不上我们的自发性。或许他们是这样;但我们不 妨提醒自己,文学批评就象呼吸一样是不可避免的。当我们在读一本书,并且对 它做出一种感情反应时,我们把通过我们自己头脑的思想感情明确地表达出来, 而且在我们自己头脑所做的批评工作中批评我们自己的头脑,这对我们并不是一 件坏事。在这个过程中可能出现的事实之一就是每当我们称赞一位诗人时,我们 倾向于强调他的作品中那些最不象别人的地方。我们声称在他作品中的这些地方 或部分我们找到了这个人独有的特点,找到了他的特殊本质。我们津津乐道这位 诗人与他的前人、尤其是与他最临近的前人之间的区别。我们努力去寻找能够被 孤立出来加以欣赏的东西。如果我们不抱这种先入的成见去研究某位诗人,我们 反而往往会发现不仅他的作品中最好的部分,而且最具有个性的部分,很可能正 是已故诗人们,也就是他的先辈们,最有力地表现了他们作品之所以不朽的部分。我说的不是这个诗人易受别人影响的青春时期,而是他的完全成熟了的阶段。

Certainly the word is not likely to appear in our appreciations of living or dead writers. Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. We know, or think we know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the French language the critical method or habit of the French; we only conclude (we are such unconscious people) that the French are “more critical” than we, and sometimes even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less spontaneous. Perhaps they are; but we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism. One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is inpidual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most inpidual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.

另一方面,假若传统或传递的唯一形式只是跟随我们前一代人的步伐,盲目 地或胆怯地遵循他们的成功诀窍,这样的“传统”肯定是应该加以制止的。我们 曾多次观察到涓涓细流消失在沙砾之中,而新颖总是胜过老调重弹。传统是一个 具有广阔意义的东西。传统并不能继承。假若你需要它,你必须通过艰苦劳动来 获得它。首先,它包括历史意识。对于任何一个超过二十五岁仍想继续写诗的人 来说,我们可以说这种历史意识几乎是绝不可少的。这种历史意识包括一种感觉, 即不仅感觉到过去的过去性,而且也感觉到它的现在性。这种历史意识迫使一个 人写作时不仅对他自己一代了若指掌,而且感觉到从荷马开始的全部欧洲文学, 以及在这个大范围中他自己国家的全部文学,构成一个同时存在的整体,组成一 个同时存在的体系。这种历史意识既意识到什么是超时间的,也意识到什么是有时间性的,而且还意识到超时间的和有时间性的东西是结合在一起的。有了这种 历史意识,一个作家便成为传统的了。这种历史意识同时也使一个作家最强烈地 意识到他自己的历史地位和他自己的当代价值。

Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, “tradition” should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition.Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense,which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year;and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

从来没有任何诗人,或从事任何一门艺术的艺术家,他本人就已具备完整的 意义。他的重要性,人们对他的评价,也就是对他和已故诗人和艺术家之间关系 的评价。你不可能只就他本身来对他作出估价;你必须把他放在已故的人们当中 来进行对照和比较。我打算把这个作为美学评论、而不仅限于历史评论的一条原 则。他必须符合,他必须一致,这种必要性却并不是单方面的。当一件新的艺术 品被创作出来时,一切早于它的艺术品都同时受到了某种影响。现存的不朽作品 联合起来形成一个完美的体系。由于新的(真正新的)艺术品加入到它们的行列 中,这个完美体系就会发生一些修改。在新作品来临之前,现有的体系是完整的。但当新鲜事物介人之后,体系若还要存在下去,那么整个的现有体系必须有所修 改,尽管修改是微乎其微的。于是每件艺术品和整个体系之间的关系、比例、价 值便得到了重新的调整;这就意味着旧事物和新事物之间取得了一致。谁要是赞 成关于体系,关于欧洲文学,关于英国文学的形式的这一概念,谁就不会认为这 种提法是荒谬的,即在同样程度上过去决定现在,现在也会修改过去。认识了这 一点的诗人将会意识到任重道远。

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of asthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.

在某种特殊意义上,你也将会意识到人们不可避免地必然会用过去的标准来 评价他。我说的是评价,不是肢解。人们井不评价他是否与已故的作家同样好, 或不如,或胜过他们。人们也绝不会用已故的批评家的教条来对他进行评价。这 将是一种把两个事物拿来相互衡量的评价和比较。要求新作品仅仅符合,那就意 味着新作品并不真正符合;新作品就算不上新,也就不成其为艺术品了。我们并 不绝对这样说:新作品由于符合,就更有价值;但它是否符合却是检验它的价值 的一个标准——当然这种检验只能稳妥慎重地进行,这是因为我们当中没有任何 人对是否符合能够做出从不犯错误的判断。我们说:这个作品看起来好象符合, 但它或许却是独创的,或它看起来似乎是独创的,但却可能是符合的。我们极不 可能发现它是一种情况,而不是另一种情况。

In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value—a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity. We say: it appears to conform, and is perhaps inpidual, or it appears inpidual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it is one and not the other.

接下去再对诗人与过去的关系做一个更明白易懂的说明:他既不能把过去原 封不动地接受下来,不能把它当作象一粒不加选择的大丸药吞下肚去,又不能完 全依赖一两个私下崇拜的作家来塑造自己,也不能完全依赖一个心爱的时期来塑 造自己。第一种途径是行不通的,第二种办法是青年时期的一条重要经验,第三 条路却是一种令人愉快的,非常可取的补充。诗人必须十分清楚什么是主流,而 且主流并不总是流经最著名的作家身旁。他必须充分认识到这一明显事实,即艺 术并不是越变越好,但艺术的原料却不是一成不变的。他必须知道欧洲的思想、 他本国的思想——总有一天他会发现这个思想比他自己的个人思想要重要得多— —这个思想是在变化的,而这种变化是一个成长过程,沿途并不抛弃任何东西, 它既不淘汰莎士比亚或荷马,也不淘汰马格德林期的画家们的石窟图画①。从艺 术家的观点出发,这个成长过程,或许可以说是提炼过程,肯定说是复杂化的过 程,并不是任何进步。从心理学家的观点出发也算不上是一种进步,或者达不到 我们所想象的程度;或许归根到底只不过根据于经济方面和机械方面变得越来越 复杂这一事实。但是现在和过去之间的区别在于有意识的现在认识过去时所采取 的方式和所达到的程度是过去认识它自己时所不能相比的。

①法国西南部马格德林地区石窟中的壁画,属于旧石器时代晚期文明。

To proceed to a more intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past: he can neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one preferred period. The first course is inadmissible, the second is an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and highly desirable supplement. The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of Europe—the mind of his own country—a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind—is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development which abandons nothing en route, which does not superannuate either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the Magdalenian draughtsmen. That this development, refinement perhaps, complication certainly, is not, from the point of view of the artist, any improvement. Perhaps not even an improvement from the point of view of the psychologist or not to the extent which we imagine; perhaps only in the end based upon a complication in economics and machinery. But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show.

有人说;“已故的作家离我们很遥远,因为我们知道的东西比他们知道的多 得多”。说得对,他们本身也就是我们所知道的东西。

Some one said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know.

我也注意到人们对显然是我为诗歌这个行业所制订的方案的某一部分通常提 出反对的意见。这个意见就是认为我的学说要求诗人具有达到荒谬程度的大量学 问(以及对学问的卖弄)。诉诸任何先哲祠中所供奉的诗人们的生平,就可以驳 回这种意见。甚至于还可以肯定地说,过多的学问会使诗人的敏感性变得迟钝或 受到歪曲。但是,尽管我们坚持不懈地相信,在他的必要的感受能力和必要的懒 散不受侵犯的范围内,一个诗人应该知道的东西越多越好,可是把知识局限在能 够被压缩成有用的形体来应付考试,为客厅提供谈话资料,或者为了满足追求出 名所采取的更狂妄手段的需要,那并不是一件好事。有些人能够吸取知识,迟钝 的人却要费九牛二虎之力才能获得它。莎士比亚从普鲁塔克①那里学到的历史知 识比大多数人能够从整个大英博物馆学到的更为重要。必须强调的是诗人应该加 强或努力获得这种对于过去的意识,而且应该在他整个创作生涯中继续加强这种 意识。

①普鲁塔克(Plutarch,公元约46~约120年)是希腊传记家和历史家。他的名著《类似的生平》叙述井对照一些希腊名人和一些罗马名人的生活经历。托马斯·诺尔斯(Thomas North,约1535~约1601)把它译成英语。莎士比亚三部罗马历史剧都取材于诺尔斯译的普鲁塔克的这部著作。

I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the métier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing-rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.

结果是,诗人把此刻的他自己不断地交给某件更有价值的东西。一个艺术家 的进步意味着继续不断的自我牺牲,继续不断的个性消灭。

剩下要做的事就是对个性消灭的过程、以及对个性消灭和传统意识之间的关系,加以说明。正是在个性消灭这一点上才可以说艺术接近了科学。因此我请求 你们,作为一个启发性的比拟,考虑一下当一小块拉成细线的白金放入一个含有 氧气和二氧化硫的箱内时所起的作用。

What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.

诚实的批评和敏锐的鉴赏不是针对诗人、而是针对诗歌而做出的。如果我们 注意到报纸上评论家们七嘴八舌的叫喊和随之而来的大众重复他们意见的窃窃私 语声,我们将会听到一大串诗人的姓名。如果我们追求的不是有关名人录的知识, 而是对诗歌的欣赏,如果我们要求的只是一首诗,我们很少能够找到它。我曾试 图指出这首诗和其它作家写的另一首诗之间关系的重要性,并且提出把诗歌看成 是以往所有被写下来的诗歌所组成的有机整体的这一概念。这个非个人的诗歌理 论的另一个方面就是这首诗及其作者之间的关系。我曾通过比拟暗示说,成熟了 的诗人和未成熟的诗人,他们各自头脑的区别,并不恰好在于对“个性”做出的 任何评价,不是由于这一个头脑较那一个必然更有趣,或有“更多的话要说”, 而是由于这一个头脑是一个更加精细地完美化了的媒介,通过这个媒介,特殊或 非常多样化的感受可以自由地形成新的组合。

II

Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the susurrus of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek not Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. In the last article I tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of “personality,” not being necessarily more interesting, or having “more to say,” but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.

我用的是催化剂的比拟。当上述的两种气体,由于白金丝的存在,产生化合 作用形成硫酸。只有当白金存在才能发生这种化合。可是新形成的酸并不含有丝 毫的白金,显然白金本身并未受到任何影响:它保持惰性、中性,无变化。诗人 的头脑就是那少量的白金。这个头脑可能部分地或全部地在诗人本人的经验上进 行操作。但是,诗人的艺术愈完美,在他身上的两个方面就会变得更加完全分离, 即一方是感受经验的个人,另一方就是进行创作的头脑。头脑也就会变得能够更 加完美地消化和改造作为它的原料的那些激情。

The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.

你们将会注意到,诗人的经验,也就是进入起改造作用的催化剂本身的那些 元素,分为二类:感情和感受。一件艺术品在欣赏这件艺术品的人身上所起的作 用是一种经验,这种经验在性质上不同于任何非艺术的经验。这种经验可能由一 种感情形成,也可能是好几种经验的组合;还有,对于作者来说,存在于特殊的 单词、短语或意象中的各种感受,也可能和上述的感情加到一起来合成最终的结 果。也有可能,伟大的诗歌可以不直接运用任何感情而写成,而是单独由各种感 受组成的。《地狱篇》第十五章(布鲁乃陀·拉蒂尼①)逐步激起了那个情景当 中明显的感情;但是,这一章的效果,尽管它像任何一件艺术品的效果是单一的 那样,却是通过大量的细节复杂性来收到的。这一章最后一节四行的诗产生一个 意象,一种附着于某个意象的感受,这个意象和感受“来到了”,它并不是简单 地从上文生出来的,而是很可能悬浮在诗人的头脑里,一直等到适当的时刻来临 它才加入到那个组合里去。诗人的头脑实际上就是一个捕捉和贮存无数的感受、 短语、意象的容器,它们停留在诗人头脑里直到所有能够结合起来形成一个新的 化合物的成分都具备在一起。

①布鲁乃陀·拉蒂尼(Brunetto Latini,公元约1220~约1294年)是意 大利哲学家和学者,是但丁的老师。在《地狱篇》第15章里,但丁表达了他对 老师拉蒂尼的崇敬、怀念和感激。

The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely. Canto XV of the Inferno (Brunetto Latini) is a working up of the emotion evident in the situation; but the effect, though single as that of any work of art, is obtained by considerable complexity of detail. The last quatrain gives an image, a feeling attaching to an image, which “came,” which did not develop simply out of what precedes, but which was probably in suspension in the poet’s mind until the proper combination arrived for it to add itself to. The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

如果你们拿最伟大的诗歌好几个有代表性的段落来比较一下,你们将会看到 化合物的类型,多种多样,你们也将会看到“崇高美”的任何半伦理的标准如何 完全没有击中目标。那是因为重要的不是那些感情或那些组成部分的“伟大”和 强烈,而是艺术创作过程的强烈,打个比方说,是一种压力,在这个压力作用之 下才会发生化合。帕奥洛和弗兰采斯加①的一段情节运用了一个 明确的感情,但是这段诗歌的强烈效果却完全不同于该情节可能产生的那个想象 中的经验所具有的任何强烈性印象。而且它的强烈效果并不比第二十六章尤里西 斯①的航海所产生的效果更强烈,而尤里西斯的航海却不直接依靠任何感情。在 感情的蜕变过程中可能出现很大的多样性。阿伽门农被谋杀,或奥赛罗的极度痛 苦,所产生的艺术效果显然比但丁诗中的情景离可能的原型(真人真事)更近。在《阿伽门农》②中,所产生的艺术感情接近于一个实际观剧人的感情;在《奥 瑟罗》③中,艺术感情接近于主人公本人的感情。但是艺术和事件之间的区别永 远是绝对的;作为一个化合起来的总体,阿伽门农被谋杀,很可能和作为化合体 的尤里西斯的航海同样复杂。两者之中的任一情况都是许多成分合成的结果。济 慈的颂歌④包含了若干和夜莺没有特殊关系的感受,但是夜莺,或许一半由于它 的动人的名字,一半也由于它的声望,却起了把这些感受组合起来的作用。

①帕奥洛和弗兰采斯加的爱情悲剧故事见但丁的《地狱篇》第五章。由于政 党利害的原因,弗兰采斯加嫁给了一个残酷、自私的丈夫。弗兰采斯加爱上了她 丈夫的年轻美貌的弟弟帕奥洛。二人同读一本书,当他们读到骑士朗斯洛特和皇 后桂尼维尔接吻时,他们就效法书中情人的举动,发生了热烈的爱情。当弗兰采 斯加的丈夫发现了此事,便把帕奥洛和弗兰采斯加一同处死。但丁听了弗兰采斯 加讲她的经历,心里充满了同情和怜悯,以至于晕倒在地上。

①尤里西斯是罗马人给荷马史诗中的英雄奥德修斯取的名宇。但丁在《地狱 篇》第26章里叙述了尤里西斯为追求知识和经验和他的伙伴们做了最后一次的 航海,向西驶向比日落更远的地方。这个故事完全是但丁自己的创造。它预示了 文艺复兴时期西方人发现新大陆和新航道的追求和探险精神。

②《阿伽门农》是古希腊悲剧诗人埃斯库罗斯写的著名悲剧。希腊联军总司 令阿伽门农,在攻陷了特洛耶城后,凯旋归来,被妻子克利泰木奈斯特拉和奸夫 伊吉修斯合谋杀害。

③《奥瑟罗》(约1604年)是莎士比亚四大悲剧之一。

④济慈(John Keats,1795~1821)是英国浪漫主义诗人。他的颂歌指他的 著名诗篇《夜莺颂》(1819年)。

If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of “sublimity” misses the mark. For it is not the “greatness,” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of. It is no more intense, furthermore, than Canto XXVI, the voyage of Ulysses, which has not the direct dependence upon an emotion. Great variety is possible in the process of transmution of emotion: the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly, perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.

我在努力抨击的观点或许是和灵魂本质单一论的形而上学理论有关。我的意 思是说,诗人有的并不是有待表现的“个性”,而是一种特殊的媒介,这个媒介 只是一种媒介而已,它并不是一个个性,通过这个媒介,许多印象和经验,用奇 特的和料想不到的方式结合起来。对诗人本身来说,这些是一些重要的印象和经 验,但它们却在他的诗歌中可能没有占任何地位,而那些在他的诗歌中变得重要 的印象和经验却可能在诗人本人身上,在他的个性上,只起了一个完全无足轻重 的作用。

The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a “personality” to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.

我打算引一段不甚常见的文字,使大家以新的注意力来阅读它,以便阐明— —或模糊——这些想法:

现在我似乎能够甚至于责备我自己 不该迷恋她的美貌,尽管我决心 要用不寻常的行动为她的死亡报仇。是为了你吗,那蚕儿在消耗她的黄颜色的精力?是为了你吗,她结束了自己的生命?卖掉贵族的领地来养活贵妇人, 只是为了消魂的一刻那微不足道的好处吗?那个汉子为什么要把公路弄得不安全, 把他自己的生命放在法官的唇间?为了把这件事办得更高雅,他还豢养马匹和仆人, 为了她,使他们变得更勇敢?……①

①引自西里儿·特纳写的《复仇者的悲剧》(1607年),第3幕,第5场, 第69~79行。

I will quote a passage which is unfamiliar enough to be regarded with fresh attention in the light—or darkness—of these observations:

And now methinks I could e’en chide myself For doating on her beauty, though her death Shall be revenged after no common action. Does the silkworm expend her blue labours For thee? For thee does she undo herself? Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships For the poor benefit of a bewildering minute? Why does yon fellow falsify highways, And put his life between the judge’s lips, To refine such a thing—keeps horse and men To beat their valours for her?…

如果从上下文来看,明显地在这段选文里,正、反两面的感情化合成一体:一方面是对美的极为强烈的向往,另一方面是对 丑的同样程度的强烈爱好。而这丑和美是相互对照和相互抵消的。相互对照的感 情的这种平衡固然存在于和这一段剧词有关的戏剧情景里,但是只有那个情景却 还不足以导致这种平衡。这种平衡,打个比方来说,就是该剧本所提供的结构上 的感情。但是剧本的总的效果,它的主要的调子,却由于这一事实,即与这个结 构上的感情具有表面上一点也不明显的相似性的一些流动的感受,和它结合起 来,给我们提供了一种新的艺术感情。

In this passage (as is evident if it is taken in its context) there is a combination of positive and negative emotions: an intensely strong attraction toward beauty and an equally intense fascination by the ugliness which is contrasted with it and which destroys it. This balance of contrasted emotion is in the dramatic situation to which the speech is pertinent, but that situation alone is inadequate to it. This is, so to speak, the structural emotion, provided by the drama. But the whole effect, the dominant tone, is due to the fact that a number of floating feelings, having an affinity to this emotion by no means superficially evident, have combined with it to give us a new art emotion.

诗人在任何程度上的卓越或有趣,并不在于他个人的感情,不在于那些被他 生活中某些特殊事件所唤起的感情。他的个人感情可能很简单、粗糙、或者乏味。他诗歌中的感情却会是一个非常复杂的东西,但是它的复杂性并不是那些在生活 中具有非常复杂或异常的感情的人们所具有的感情复杂性。实际上,诗歌中怪僻 的错误之一就是去寻求新的人类感情来加以表达;正是这种在错误的地方寻求新 奇的做法使诗歌暴露出违反常情的效果。诗人的任务并不是去寻找新的感情,而 是去运用普通的感情,去把它们综合加工成为诗歌,并且去表达那些并不存在于 实际感情中的感受。那些他从未经历过的感情和那些他所熟悉的感情对他都会是 有用的。因此,我们不得不认为“在平静中被回忆的感情”①是一个不准确的公 式。那是因为诗歌既不是感情,又不是回忆,更不是平静,除非把平静的含义加 以曲解。诗歌是一种集中,是这种集中所产生的新东西。诗歌把一大群经验集中 起来,而这些经验在注重实际和积极的人看来,一点也算不上是什么经验。诗歌 的集中并不是有意识地或经过深思熟虑而进行的。这些经验并不是“回忆起来的”, 最后当它们在某一种气氛中化合在一起时,这种气氛只有在这个意义上才是“平 静的”,即它只是消极地伴随着化合的行动。当然这还不是全部真相。在诗歌写 作中,有许多东西必须是有意识的和深思熟虑的。事实上,拙劣的诗人在他应该 有意识的地方往往无意识,在他应该无意识的地方却有意识。这两方面的错误都 趋向于使他成为“个人的”。诗歌不是感情的放纵,而是感情的脱离;诗歌不是 个性的表现,而是个性的脱离。当然,只有具有个性和感情的人们才懂得想要脱 离这些东西是什么意思。

It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquillity” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not “recollected,” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is “tranquil” only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the whole story. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him “personal.” Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

——————— ①引自华兹华斯对诗歌下的著名的定义:“诗歌是强烈感情的自然的洋溢;它的来源是在平静中回忆起来的感情”(“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected intranquillity.”),《抒情歌谣集》,第2版序言,1802年。

这篇文章打算在形而上学或神秘主义的边界上停笔,并打算局限于得出一些 实用的结论,以供对诗歌有兴趣并有责任感的人来应用。把对诗人的兴趣转移到 诗歌上面来,这是一个值得赞扬的目标,因为这样做将会有助于对当前的诗歌, 好诗和坏诗,都能做出更为公允的评价。许多人都欣赏表达真诚感情的诗体,还 有少数人能够欣赏技巧的卓越。但很少有人理解诗歌是有意义的感情的表现,这 种感情只活在诗里,而不存在于诗人的经历中。艺术的感情是非个人的。诗人不 可能达到这个非个人的境界,除非他把自己完全献给应该做的工作。他也不大可 能知道什么是应该做的工作,除非他不仅生活在此时此地,而且还生活在过去的 这一时刻,除非他所意识到的不是已死亡的东西,而是已经活起来的东西。

(1917年)

①引自亚里士多德,《论心灵》,l.4。

III

This essay proposes to halt at the frontier of metaphysics or mysticism, and confine itself to such practical conclusions as can be applied by the responsible person interested in poetry. To pert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad. There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.

——————— ·Jacqueline扫校自《艾略特文学论文集》,李赋宁译著,百花洲文艺出版 社,1994年9月

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