Tristi fummo
nell’ aer dolce che dal sol s’ allegra.[81.2]
I knew the Church condemned accidia, but the whole idea seemed to me quite fantastic, just the sort of sin, I fancied, a priest who knew nothing about real life would invent. Nor could I understand how Dante, who says that “sorrow remarries us to God,” [81.3] could have been so harsh to those who were enamoured of melancholy, if any such there really were. I had no idea that some day this would become to me one of the greatest temptations of my life[81a].
接着我必须学会快乐。 我一度凭直觉懂得快乐，或者以为自己懂得快乐。心中曾一直春意盎然。我的气质与快乐是如鱼得水，生活满满当当的尽是欢娱，就像把酒斟到了杯沿。而今我是从一个全新的立足点来考虑生活，即使是想象一下快乐是什么，常常都极为困难。记得第一个学期在牛津读佩特的《文艺复兴史研究》，那本书对我的生活有着奇特的影响；看到但丁把那些动辄悲悲戚戚的人放在了地狱的下层，就到学院图书馆翻到《神曲》中的那一段，只见在可怕的沼泽地下躺着那些 “在甜美的空气中愁眉苦脸”的人，永远是一声一叹地念叨着：
那时我们愁眉苦脸
而阳光中甜美的空气喜气洋洋。
我知道教会谴责精神上的懒散忧郁，但那时觉得这整个想法似乎颇有妙趣，就这个罪，我猜想，也是哪个对真实生活一点也不了解的牧师编出来的。我也不明白但丁，为什么既然说了 “悲哀让我们与上帝重新结合”，又对那些沉迷于忧伤的人那么狠心，如果真有那样的人的话。当时怎么也想不到，有一天忧伤竟会成为我生活中一个最大的诱惑[81a]。
81
82
While I was in Wandsworth Prison I longed to die. It was my one desire[82a]. When after two months in the Infirmary I was transferred here, and found myself growing gradually better in physical health, I was filled with rage. I determined to commit suicide on the very day on which I left prison. After a time that evil mood passed away, and I made up my mind to live, but to wear gloom as a King wears purple: never to smile again[82b]: to turn whatever house I entered into a house of mourning: to make my friends walk slowly in sadness with me: to teach them that melancholy is the true secret of life: to maim them with an alien sorrow: to mar them with my own pain. Now I feel quite differently. I see it would be both ungrateful and unkind of me to pull so long a face that when my friends came to see me they would have to make their faces still longer in order to show their sympathy, or, if I desired to entertain them, to invite them to sit down silently to bitter herbs and funeral baked meats[82c]. I must learn how to be cheerful and happy[82d]. 在瓦兹华斯监狱时我真想死。一心想死[82a]。在医院里呆了两个月后便转到这里，发现自己身体渐渐好转，气得不得了，下决心出狱当天就自杀。过了一阵，心中的这股恶气消了，我决心活下去，但要像君王坐在宝座上那样，坐定愁城，永不再微笑[82b]。不管进哪家房子都要让那一家变得像刚死了人似的，不管哪个朋友跟我走在一起都要愁冗冗的举步维艰。要让他们知道悲愁乃生活的真正秘密，要让他们的心因为一份与己无干的悲怆而凋零，要让他们的日子因为我的痛苦而残缺。现在我的感受就大不一样了。我看到，要是自己整天郁郁寡欢地拉长脸，弄得朋友探访时得把脸拉得更长以示同情；或者一招待他们，就请人家坐下来默默地品尝苦涩的药草、火葬场烤出的肉块——要是那样就太忘恩负义、太对不住人家了[82c]。我必须学会欢乐，学会快乐[82d]。
82
83
The last two occasions on which I was allowed to see my friends here I tried to be as cheerful as possible, and to show my cheerfulness in order to make them some slight return for their trouble in coming all the way from town to visit me. It is only a slight return, I know, but it is the one, I feel certain, that pleases them most[83a]. I saw Robbie for an hour on Saturday week, and I tried to give the fullest possible expression to the delight I really felt at our meeting. And that, in the views and ideas I am here shaping for myself, I am quite right is shown to me by the fact that now for the first time since my imprisonment I have a real desire to live.
上两次允许在这里会朋友时，我就尽可能地显得快乐。 我显得快乐，以此作为对他们大老远从伦敦来看我的一个小小的回报。我知道，只不过是个小小的回报，但我感到，这肯定是最让他们高兴的回报[83a]。我一周前的星期六同罗比会面了一个钟头，努力把相见时的真心欢乐尽情表达出来。这么做，以我在这里为自己酝酿的思想观点看，还是很对的，而入狱以来第一次真心想活下去，对我便是明证。
83
84
There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little of it[84a]. I see new developments in Art and Life, each one of which is a fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world is? I think you can guess what it is[84b]. It is the world in which I have been living.
摆在面前的有这么多事情要做，无论如何也得让我完成一些，否则就此死去，真会是天大的悲剧[84a]。我看到了艺术与生活新的发展，而每个发展都是一个新的完美的方式。我渴望活下去，探索这一于我简直就是新天地的世界。你想知道这新的世界是什么吗？我想你也猜得出[84b]。就是我一直以来生活的这个世界。
84
85
Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world. I used to live entirely for pleasure[85a]. I shunned sorrow and suffering of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible, to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy. My mother, who knew life as a whole, used often to quote to me Goethe’s lines[85b]—written by Carlyle in a book he had given her years ago—and translated, I fancy, by him also:
Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the midnight hours
Weeping and waiting for the morrow,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers.
[85c] [85.1]
They were the lines that noble Queen of Prussia, whom Napoleon treated with such coarse brutality, used to quote in her humiliation and exile:[85.2] they were the lines my mother often quoted in the troubles of her later life: I absolutely declined to accept or admit the enormous truth hidden in them. I could not understand it[85d]. I remember quite well how I used to tell her that I did not want to eat my bread in sorrow, or to pass any night weeping and watching for a more bitter dawn. I had no idea that it was one of the special things that the Fates had in store for me; that for a whole year of my life, indeed, I was to do little else. But so has my portion been meted out to me; and during the last few months I have, after terrible struggles and difficulties, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden in the heart of pain. Clergymen, and people who use phrases without wisdom, sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns things that one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. What one had felt dimly through instinct, about Art, is intellectually and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension[85e]. 如此说来，悲怆，以及它所教给人的一切，便是我的新世界。我过去曾经只为享乐痛快而活[85a]，对种种悲伤和痛苦避而远之。我讨厌这些，下决心尽可能不去理睬，也就是说，把它们当作不完美的方式，不属于我生活架构的一部分，不在我的哲学中有一席之地。我母亲生前能全面理解生活，常常给我引歌德的几句诗[85b] ——那是卡莱尔在多年前送给她的一本书中写的——我猜也是卡莱尔自己翻译的：
从未就着悲哀吃过面包，
从未在夜半时分饮泣
痛哭着苦等明朝，
就不懂得啊，你在天的神力[85c]。
这些诗句，尊贵的普鲁士王后，就是被拿破仑百般苛待的普鲁士王后，在羞辱与流放中曾常常引用。这些诗句，我母亲在晚年的烦恼中常常引用；我却决绝地不承认、不接受其中蕴含的巨大真理。那时还明白不了[85d]。记得很清楚我常常对她说，我不想就着悲哀吃面包，也不想有哪个夜里痛哭着苦等一个更苦的黎明。我根本不知道，那就是命运之神等着我的一个特别安排；的确，我生命中将会有整整一年，过的日子与这没什么两样。但命运就是这么派给我了；最近几个月来，经历了可怕的挣扎与磨难，才读得懂隐含在痛心疾首之后的一些功课。教士们，还有那些用警句却不带智慧的人们，有时把受苦说得很神秘。受苦其实是一种启示，让人明白以前从未明白的事理，让人从一个新的立足点去思考整个历史。关于艺术，过去凭直觉隐隐约约感到的东西，现在以心智和感情领悟了，再清晰不过地洞察了，刻骨铭心地体味了[85e]。
85
86
I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great Art [86a]. What the artist is always looking for is that mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which Form reveals[86b]. Of such modes of existence there are not a few: youth and the arts preoccupied with youth may serve as a model for us at one moment: at another, we may like to think that, in its subtlety and sensitiveness of impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwelling in external things and making its raiment of earth and air, of mist and city alike, and in the morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones and colours, modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially what was realised in such plastic perfection by the Greeks. Music, in which all subject is absorbed in expression and cannot be separated from it, is a complex example, and a flower or a child a simple example of what I mean: but Sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and Art.
我现在看到了，悲怆，这人类所能达致的最高情感，既是一切伟大艺术所归的类型，也是一切伟大艺术必经的考验 [86a]。艺术家一直在寻找的，就是这种灵肉合一而不可分的存在方式：外在为内在的表达，形式为内容的揭示[86b]。这种存在的方式为数不少：有一阵，青春和专注于青春的那些艺术可以作为我们的一个典范；换个时候，我们也许会想到现代的风景画艺术，它印象的微妙与敏感，所暗示的一个寓于外在事物中的精神﹐一个大地与天空、雾霭与城市皆为其外衣的精神，以及它的种种情调、气氛和色彩的不同常态的交汇感应，通过绘画的形象，为我们展现了希腊人如此完美地用雕塑展现的内涵。音乐呢，因为全部主题都吸收在表达之中而不能与之分离，是个复杂的例子；一朵花或一个小孩，则是说明我的意思的简单例子。但是，悲怆乃生活与艺术的终极类型。86
87
Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous[87a]. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask[87b]. Truth in Art is not any correspondence between the essential idea and the accidental existence; it is not the resemblance of shape to shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystal to the form itself: it is no Echo coming from a hollow hill, any more than it is the well of silver water[87c] in the valley that shows the Moon to the Moon and Narcissus to Narcissus[87d]. Truth in Art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to Sorrow. There are times when Sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other[87e], but out of Sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.
欢乐与欢笑背后可能藏着一种性情，一种粗俗、刻薄、冷酷的性情[87a]。但悲怆的背后却永远是悲怆。痛苦，不像痛快，是不戴面具的[87b]。艺术的真实，不在于本质的意念和偶然的存在之间的任何对应；不是形与影的相似，或者说形式本身同映在水晶中的那个形式的相似；也不是空山回音，或者幽谷中的一汪清水[87c]，把月亮倒映给月亮，把水仙倒映给水仙[87d]。艺术的真实是事物同其本身的整合，达成的外形表达着内涵，使灵魂获得肉身，使肉体充满精神。基于这个理由，就不存在能与悲怆相提并论的真实。有些时候悲怆似乎是我唯一的真实。其他的可能是眼睛或口腹的幻觉，变出来蒙蔽一个撑坏另一个[87e]。但天地万象，是以悲怆建造的，一个孩子、一颗星星的诞生，都伴随着疼痛。
87
88
More than this, there is about Sorrow an intense, an extraordinary reality. I have said of myself that I was one who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. There is not a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not stand in symbolic relations to the very secret of life. For the secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything[88a]. When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to us, and what is bitter so bitter, that we inevitably directed all our desires towards pleasure, and seek not merely for “a month or twain to feed on honeycomb,” [88.1] but for all our years to taste no other food, ignorant the while that we may be really starving the soul.
不止于此，关于悲怆，还有一个严酷的、非同一般的现实。我说过我曾是我这个时代艺术与文化的象征。而同我一起呆在这不幸的地方的每一个不幸的人，无不象征着生活的真谛。因为生活的真谛即是受苦。藏在万事万物背后的就是这个[88a]。涉世之初，甜美的是如此甜美，苦涩的是如此苦涩，我们必然会一心向往欢娱和快乐，追求的不止是“一两个月只吃蜜糖过活”，而是一辈子不尝别的，不知道这么一来，我们可真的让灵魂挨饿了。
88
89
I remember talking once on this subject to one of the most beautiful personalities I have ever known:[89.1] a woman, whose sympathy and noble kindness to me both before and since the tragedy of my imprisonment have been beyond power and description: one who has really assisted me, though she does not know it, to bear the burden of my troubles more than anyone else in the whole world has: and all through the mere fact of her existence: through her being what she is, partly an ideal and partly an influence, a suggestion of what one might become, as well as a real help towards becoming it, a soul that renders the common air sweet, and makes what is spiritual seem as simple and natural as sunlight or the sea, one for whom Beauty and Sorrow walk hand in hand and have the same message. On the occasion of which I am thinking I recall distinctly how I said to her that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. She told me so, but I could not believe her. I was not in the sphere in which such belief was to be attained to. Now it seems to me that Love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world[89a]. I cannot conceive any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the worlds have indeed, as I have said, been built out of Sorrow, it has been by the hands of Love, because in no other way could the Soul of man for whom the worlds are made reach the full statue of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but Pain for the beautiful Soul[89b]. 记得曾经同我所认识的一个心灵最美好的人谈过这事：是一位女士，在我遭难坐牢的前前后后，她对我的同情和崇高的善心好意非笔墨所能书，非一般人所能及。她真正地帮助了我，虽然她自己并不知道，帮我忍受磨难的重负。天底下再没有谁对我的帮助有她大。而这帮助，凭借的不过是她的存在而已；凭借着她之为她：既是个理想又是个影响，既暗示了人可能达到的境界，又真的扶持你去达到这个境界。她的心灵使空气飘香，能把属于精神的东西变得简单又自然，一如阳光和大海；对于她，美与悲相携而行，传递着同一个信息。眼下我心中所想的这次谈话中，记得清清楚楚我跟她说了，就伦敦一条小巷里的苦，便足以说明上帝不爱世人，只要什么地方有人悲伤，哪怕不过是一个小孩，在某个小花园里，为自己犯的或不是自己犯的过错而哭泣，造化脸上就整个儿黯然无光了。我那是大错特错。她说了，可我无法相信。我那时还没达到那个境界，能有这样的信仰。现在我似乎看到了，世界之所以悲深苦重，唯一可能的解释是因为某种爱[89a]。想不出还有别的什么解释。我信了，没有别的解释。而如果真的像我所说万象是用悲怆建造的，那造出这一切的是爱的双手。因为没有别的什么途径，能让万象为之而设的人的灵魂达到至善至美的境界。痛快享乐，是为了美好的肉体；而痛苦伤心，则是为了美好的灵魂[89b]。
89
90
When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God[90a]. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer’s day. And so a child could. But with me and such as I am it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet[90b]. It is so difficult to keep “heights that the soul is competent to gain.” [90.1] We think in Eternity, but we move slowly through Time: and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not speak again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one’s cell, and into the cell of one’s heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one’s house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one’s chance or choice to be[90c]. And, though at present you may find it a thing hard to believe, it is true none the less that for you, living in freedom and idleness and comfort, it is more easy to learn the lessons of Humility than it is for me, who begin the day by going down on my knees and washing the floor of my cell. For prison-life, with its endless privations and restrictions, makes one rebellious. The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone. One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all. And he who is in a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use the phrase of which the Church is so fond—so rightly fond, I dare say—for in life, as in Art, the mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the soul, and shuts out the airs of heaven. Yet I must learn these lessons here, if I am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled with joy if my feet are on the right road, and my face set towards the “gate which is called Beautiful,” [90.2] though I may fall many times in the mire, and often in the mist go astray.
当我说我信了这些道理时，口气太大了。 远远的，犹如一粒美轮美奂的珍珠，看得见那是上帝的城池[90a]。那城是如此美妙，好像一个小孩子在夏日里一天便可以到达似的。小孩子可以。但是我，像我现在这样，就不同了。一个道理，人可以片刻间顿然领悟，但又在沉甸甸地跟在后头的深更半夜里失去[90b]。要守住“灵魂所能登上的高峰”，谈何容易。我们思想着的是永恒，但慢慢通过的却是时间。而对铁窗内的我们时间过得有多慢，就不用再说了；也不用再说那爬回监狱牢房、爬进心底牢房的疲惫与绝望。那疲惫与绝望如此奇怪，驱不散，抹不掉，好像只能装点洒扫房屋让它们进来，就像接一个不受欢迎的客人、一个厉害的主子，或者一个奴隶，我们是阴差阳错或咎由自取地成了奴下之奴[90c]。虽然一时间你可能觉得难以相信，但对于你这依然是千真万确的：自由自在、无所事事、舒舒服服地过着日子，学会谦卑的功课要比我容易，我每天一早就得双膝跪地，擦洗牢房的地板。因为监狱生活那道不尽的艰辛、数不完的条规，使人产生叛逆心理。最可怕的不在于这令人心碎——心生来就是要碎的——而在于这使人心变成石头。有时人会觉得，如果不绷着铁板一样的脸皮，翘着不屑的嘴角，这一天就挨不到黑。而心怀叛逆的人，借用教堂里很喜欢用的一句话说，受不到神的恩典——我敢说，教堂喜欢这句话是很有道理的——因为生活同艺术一样，叛逆的心境使灵魂闭塞，将灵气堵住。然而这功课我要学的话，就必须在这个地方学，而且要是脚踏在正道上，脸朝定那“名叫美的门”，心中就必然会充满喜乐，尽管常常也会在泥淖中失足跌倒，在迷雾中失去方向。
