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This new life,[91.1] as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to call it, is, of course, no new life at all, but simply the continuance, by means of development, and evolution, of my former life. I remember when I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends—as we were strolling round Magdalen’s narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in the June before I took my degree—that I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out into the world with that passion in my soul[91a]. And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun gilt side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even, the broken words that come from the lips of pain, remorse that makes one walk in thorns[91b], conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes, the misery that puts ashes on its head[91.2], the anguish that chooses sackcloth for its raiment and into its own drink puts gall—all these were things of which I was afraid. And as I had determined to know nothing of them, I was forced to taste each one of them in turn, to feed on them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at all. I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does to the full[91c]. There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb. But to have continued the same life would have been wrong because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on. The other half of the garden had its secrets for me also.
这新生，由于热爱但丁我有时喜欢这么叫它，当然了，绝不是新的生活，它不过是我以往的生活通过发展和进化的延续罢了。记得在牛津时同一个朋友说过——那是个六月的早晨，在我拿到学位之前我们正沿着莫德林学院那些莺歌燕舞的小路散着步——说我要尝遍世界这个园子里每棵树结的果，说我要心怀这份激情走出校门踏进世界[91a]。的的确确，我是这样地走出校门，这样地生活了。我犯的唯一错误，是把自己局限在那些以为是长在园子向阳一面的树当中，避开另一边的幽幽暗影。失败、羞辱、穷困、悲哀、绝望、艰难、甚至眼泪、从痛苦的嘴唇断断续续冒出来的话语、令人如行荆丛[91b]的悔恨、良心的谴责、最终要受惩罚的自轻自贱、柴灰蒙头的悲愁、披麻布饮苦胆的悲情——这一切都是我所害怕的。正因为决心不过问这些，后来才被迫一样一样轮番将它们尝遍，被迫以它们为食，真的，有几个月别的什么也吃不上。我一点也不后悔曾经为享乐而活过。我尽情活了个痛快，就像人不管什么都要做个痛快[91c]。什么快乐都经历过了。我把灵魂的明珠投进杯中的酒里。我踏着长笛的乐音行在享乐之路上。我过着蜜糖般的日子。但如果继续过着同样的生活就不对了，因为这会限制心性的发展。我只有往前走，园子的另一半同样也有它的秘密留给我。
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Of course all this is foreshadowed and prefigured in my art. Some of it is in “The Happy Prince:” some of it in “The Young King,” [92.1] notably in the passage where the Bishop says to the kneeling boy, “Is not He who made misery wiser than thou art?” a phrase which when I wrote it seemed to me little more than a phrase: a great deal of it is hidden away in the note of Doom that like a purple thread runs through the gold cloth of Dorian Gray: in “The Critic as Artist” it is set forth in many colours: in The Soul of Man it is written down simply and in letters too easy to read: it is one of the refrains whose recurring motifs make Salome so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad: in the prose-poem of the man who from the bronze of the image of the “Pleasure that liveth for a Moment” has to make the image of the “Sorrow that abideth for Ever” it is incarnate[92a]. It could not have been otherwise. At every single moment of one’s life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol.
当然所有这一切在我的作品中已有先兆，已有预示。有的在《快乐王子》中；有的在《年轻国王》中，特别是主教对跪着的男孩说的那一句：“难道制造不幸的神，不比你聪明吗？”这话写的时候我以为不过是普通一句话罢了；有很多则隐藏在《道林?格雷》中那像紫线缝金衣般穿过整篇的厄运这一主旨中；在《作为艺术家的批评家》中，这预示又呈现为多种色调；在《人的灵魂》中则写得直截了当、一目了然；在《莎乐美》中，又像副歌的迭句一样，其多次重现的主题使剧本变得像一部音乐作品，把它串成了一首叙事曲; 在那首散文诗里, 说那个人不得不用铸《快乐如过眼烟云》塑像的青铜去铸《悲怆地久天长》的塑像，这预示就铸成了具象[92a]。不可能会是别的了。在一个人的生命中，每时每刻的做人，不但取决于他曾经怎样，也同样取决于他即将怎样。艺术是一个象征，因为人是一个象征。
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It is, if I can fully attain to it, the ultimate realisation of the artistic life. For the artistic life is simple self-development. Humility in the artist is his frank acceptance of all experiences, just as Love in the artist is simply that sense of Beauty that reveals to the world its body and its soul. In Marius the Epicurean[93.1] Pater seeks to reconcile the artistic life with the life of religion in the deep, sweet and austere sense of the word. But Marius is little more than a spectator: an ideal spectator indeed, and one to whom it is given “to contemplate the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions,” which Wordsworth defines as the poet’s true aim:[93.2] yet a spectator merely, and perhaps a little too much occupied with the comeliness of the vessels of the Sanctuary to notice that it is the Sanctuary of Sorrow that he is gazing at.
倘若我能完全达致这一境界，那就是艺术生命的终极感悟。 因为艺术生命是简单的自我发展。艺术家的谦卑在于他对所有经验的坦诚接受，正如艺术家的爱无非是那份对美的感受，那份向世界揭示其灵与肉的美感。佩特在他的小说《伊壁鸠鲁信徒马利乌斯》中，想求得艺术生命与宗教生命在深层、美好、严肃意义上的一致。 但马利乌斯同一个旁观者相差无几，的确是一个再好不过的旁观者了，天生“以合适的情感观照生活之奇景”，华兹华斯把这点定义为诗人的真正目的。然而他这个旁观者只不过、或者太过于注重神殿的器皿是否好看得体，因而未能注意到他所注目的乃是悲怆之神殿。
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I see a far more intimate and immediate connection between the true Life of Christ and the true life of the artist, and I take a keen pleasure in the reflection that long before Sorrow had made my days her own and bound me to her wheel I had written in The Soul of Man that he who would lead a Christ-like life must be entirely and absolutely himself, and had taken as my types not merely the shepherd on the hillside and the prisoner in his cell but also the painter to whom the world is a pageant and the poet for whom the world is a song. I remember saying once to Andre Gide, as we sat together in some Paris café, that while Metaphysics had but little real interest for me, and Morality absolutely none, there was nothing that either Plato or Christ had said that could not be transferred immediately into the sphere of Art, and there and its complete fulfilment. It was a generalisation as profound as it was novel.
我看到了，真正的基督生命和真正的艺术家生命之间，有一个亲密直接得多的联系；令我大为高兴的是，回想起在悲怆占据我的日日夜夜、使我身心俱裂之前，我早就在《人的灵魂》中写道，一个人必须完全是、绝对是他自己，才会过基督那样的生活，而我引为典型的，不但有山坡上的牧羊人、牢里的囚徒，还有画家，对于他们世界是一幅美景，还有诗人，对于他们世界是一首歌。记得有一次跟安德烈?纪德在巴黎的一家咖啡馆里，我对他说过，对形而上学我少有兴趣，对道德伦理则一点也没有，然而不管是柏拉图还是耶稣基督，他们所说的无不能直接移植到艺术领域，并在此获得圆满的实现。这一条概括既新颖又深刻。
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Nor is it merely that we can discern in Christ that close union of personality with perfection which forms the real distinction between classical and romantic Art and makes Christ the true precursor of the romantic movement in life, but the very basis of his nature was the same as that of the nature of the artist, an intense and flamelike imagination. He realised in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation. He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich. You can see now一can you not?—that when you wrote to me in my trouble, “When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting. The next time you are ill I will go away at once,” you were as remote from the true temper of the artist as you were from what Matthew Arnold calls “the secret of Jesus.” [95.1] Either would have taught you that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time and for pleasure or for pain, write up on the wall of your house in letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver “Whatever happens to another happens to oneself,” and should anyone ask you what such an inscription can possibly mean you can answer that it means “Lord Christ’s heart and Shakespeare’s brain.”
在基督身上还看得到个性与完美那种紧密的结合，这结合形成了古典和浪漫艺术的真正区别，也使得基督成为生活中浪漫运动的真正先驱；还看得到基督天性的根本基础与艺术家的完全一样，是一种热烈奔放、火一样的想象力。 他在人类关系的整个领域中实现了那种由想象引发的同情，而这在艺术领域中又是创作的唯一奥秘。他理解麻风病人的痛苦，失明之人的黑暗，为享乐而活者的巨大悲哀，富人不可思议的贫乏。现在你明白了吧——难道还不明白吗？——在我病痛之中你写信给我说，“你像尊偶像，没了底座就没意思了。 下次你要是病了我马上走开”，这样做距离真正艺术家的气质，同距离马修? 阿诺德所称的“耶稣的真谛”一样遥远。无论艺术家的气质还是耶稣的真谛，都会教你怎样对别人的遭遇感同身受。你如果需要一句座右铭好晨昏温习，好读着痛快或痛苦，那就把这一句写在你家墙壁上，让它日沐阳光夜被月华吧：“对别人的遭遇感同身受。 ”要是有人问起这样一句座右铭意味着什么，你就回答说，它意味着“主耶稣的心肠和莎士比亚的头脑”。95
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Christ’s place indeed is with the poets. His whole conception of Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be realised by it. What God was to the Pantheist, man was to him. He was the first to conceive the divided races as a unity. Before his time there had been gods and men. He alone saw that on the hills of life there were but God and Man, and, feeling through the mysticism of sympathy that in himself each had been made incarnate, he calls himself the Son of the One or the son of the other, according to his mood. More than anyone else in history he wakes in us that temper of wonder to which Romance always appeals. There is still something to me almost incredible in the idea of a young Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world: all that had been already done and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun:[96.1] the sufferings of those whose name is Legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs,[96.2] oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and whose silence is heard only of God: and not merely imagining this but actually achieving it, so that at the present moment all who come in contact with his personality, even though they may neither bow to his altar nor kneel before his priest, yet somehow find that the ugliness of their sins is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow revealed to them.
基督的确是诗人的同道。他整个的人性观念，都是出自想象也只有通过想象才能领悟。人之于基督，一如上帝之于泛神论者。把分成各种各类的人视为整体，他是第一人。在他到来之前，有诸多的神和各样的人。唯有他，看到在生活的座座山峦上只有一个上帝和一样人，而且借助同情的玄妙，使两者都通过他道成肉身，并依心情而定，称自己为神之子、或人之子。历史上没有谁能像他那样唤醒我们心中那种永远为罗曼司所激动的奇妙气质。我仍然觉得其中有些事几乎难以置信：一个年轻的加利利农夫想象他能双肩担起整个世界的重负——一切犯过的罪、受过的苦，一切要犯还未犯的罪、要受还未受的苦；尼罗的罪过、教皇亚历山大六世的罪过、其私生子泽扎? 博尔吉亚的罪过、那个身兼罗马皇帝和太阳神祭司的人的罪过；那些名字叫“群”，住在坟茔里的人所受的苦；那些受压迫的民族、工厂的童工、盗贼、囚犯、流浪汉；那些无言地受着压迫，他们的沉默只有上帝听到的人——这些何止是想象，而是真的做到了。所以，现在任何人与他的人格交通，即使没向他的圣坛鞠躬、没向他的牧师下跪，也会神奇地感到他们的罪孽褪去了丑陋，他们的悲怆显出了美。96
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I have said of him that he ranks with the poets. That is true. Shelley and Sophocles are of his company. But his entire life also is the most wonderful of poems. For “pity and terror” [97.1] there is nothing in the entire cycle of Greek Tragedy to touch it. The absolute purity of the protagonist raises the entire scheme to a height of romantic art from which the sufferings of “Thebes and Pelops’ line” [97.2] are by their very horror excluded, and shows how wrong Aristotle was when he said in his treatise on the Drama that it would be impossible to bear the spectacle of one blameless in pain.[97.3] Nor in Aeschylus or Dante, those stern masters of tenderness, in Shakespeare, the most purely human of all the great artists, in the whole of Celtic myth and legend where the loveliness of the world is shown through a mist of tears, and the life of a man is no more than the life of a flower, is there anything that for sheer simplicity of pathos wedded and made one with sublimity of tragic effect can be said to equal or approach even the last act of Christ’s Passion. The little supper with his companions, one of whom had already sold him for a price: the anguish in the quiet moonlit olive-garden: the false friend coming close to him so as to betray him with a kiss: the friend who still believed in him and on whom as on a rock he had hoped to build a House of Refuge for Man denying him as the bird cried to the dawn: his own utter loneliness, his submission, his acceptance of everything: and along with it all such scenes as the high priest of Orthodoxy rending his raiment in wrath, and the Magistrate of Civil Justice calling for water in the vain hope of cleansing himself of that stain of innocent blood that makes him the scarlet figure of History: the coronation-ceremony of Sorrow, one of the most wonderful things in the whole of recorded time: the crucifixion of the Innocent One before the eyes of his mother and of the disciple whom he loved: the soldiers gambling and throwing dice for his clothes: the terrible death by which he gave the world its most eternal symbol[97a]: and his final burial in the tomb of the rich man, his body swathed in Egyptian linen with costly spices and perfumes as though he had been a King’s son—when one contemplates all this from the point of view of Art alone one cannot but be grateful that the supreme office of the Church should be the playing of the tragedy without the shedding of blood, the mystical presentation by means of dialogue and costume and gesture even of the Passion of her Lord, and it is always a source of pleasure and awe to me to remember that the ultimate survival of the Greek Chorus, lost elsewhere to art, is to be found in the servitor answering the priest at Mass.
我说了他与诗人同道。这是真的。雪莱和索福克勒斯即是他的伙伴。但他的整个生命也是诗中最美妙的一首。就“怜悯与恐惧”而言，倾所有古希腊悲剧也不可望其项背。主人公绝对纯洁的形象，使整个情节上升到一个浪漫艺术的高度。这一高度，底比斯或珀罗普斯家族所遭受的苦难，恰恰因为其情节的恐怖而无法达到。主人公的纯洁也说明亚里士多德的话大错特错，他在阐述戏剧的论著中说，看到一个毫无过失的人痛苦是不可忍受的。同样的，在埃斯库罗斯或但丁这两个严格对待温情的大师笔下，在莎士比亚这一最具人情味的艺术大师笔下，在凯而特人全部那些以泪眼看世界之美好、将人生视为一朵花的神话传奇中，也找不到什么，能在悲情的朴实与悲剧效果的崇高融为一体这一点上，同耶稣受难中哪怕最后的一幕相提并论。那顿小小的晚餐他与同伴们共进，其中有一人已经将他索价卖掉了；月光中，橄榄园里静悄悄的是一片痛苦，那假朋友走上前，要用一个吻将他的身份暴露；那个还信着他的朋友，他像倚靠磐石一样本想倚重这朋友来建起一所供世人避难的房子，在黎明鸡叫前不认他；他本人孑然一身的孤独、那样的温良谦恭、那样的逆来顺受；与此同时，还有那一幕幕情境：如大祭司怒撕衣服，巡抚要水、无济于事地想洗去手上那使他成为历史罪人的义人之血；那悲怆的加冕典礼，有史以来最奇妙的一个情景；将这无辜之人在他母亲和他所爱的信徒面前钉上十字架；兵丁赌博，为分他的衣服拈阄；通过这惨烈的死，他给世界留下最永恒的象征[97a]；而他最终葬在富人的坟里，身体裹着埃及的细麻布加贵重的香料，宛如王子一般——这一切，单从艺术的角度来观照，也使人不得不心怀感激，感激教会的至高职能成了即使是上演这出悲剧，不必流血，也不借助对话、服装及手势等带神秘感的表现，来演出她的救主最后的受难历程；而我呢，一想到那在别的艺术中失传的古希腊合唱，最终在做弥撒时以赞礼人对神父的应答中保存了下来，喜乐和敬畏之情总是油然而生。
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Yet the whole life of Christ—so entirely may Sorrow and Beauty be made one in their meaning and manifestation—is really an idyll, though it ends with the veil of the temple being rent, and the darkness coming over the face of the earth, and the stone rolled to the door of the sepulcher[98a]. One always thinks of him as a young bridegroom with his companions, as indeed he somewhere describes himself, or as a shepherd straying through a valley with his sheep in search of green meadow or cool stream, or as a singer trying to build out of music the walls of the city of God, or as a lover for whose love the whole world was too small. His miracles seem to me as exquisite as the coming of Spring, and quite as natural. I see no difficulty at all in believing that such was the charm of his personality that his mere presence could bring peace to souls in anguish, and that those who touched his garments or his hands forgot their pain: or that as he passed by on the highway of life people who had seen nothing of life’s mysteries saw them clearly, and others who had been deaf to every voice but that of Pleasure heard for the first time the voice of Love and found it as “musical as is Apollo’s lute:” [98.1] or that evil passions fled at his approach, and men whose dull unimaginative lives had been but a mode of death rose as it were from the grave when he called them: or that when he taught on the hillside the multitude forgot their hunger and thirst and the cares of this world, and that to his friends who listened to him as he sat at meat the coarse food seemed delicate, and the water had the taste of good wine, and the whole house became full of the odour and sweetness of nard[98b]. 然而基督的整个生命——这生命可以如此完满地在意义和表现上将悲与美合而为一——真的是一首田园牧歌，尽管在结尾时殿里的幔子裂为两半，遍地都黑暗了，石头滚到墓穴前[98a]。人们总是把他看作是一位同友伴们相聚的年轻新郎，确实就像他自己在什么地方说的；或者是一个倘佯在山谷里的牧人，同他的羊群一道找寻绿草和甘泉；或者是一名歌者，要用歌声为上帝的城筑起城墙；或者是一个大爱之人，他的爱整个世界也装不下。对于我，他的神迹煦煦如冬去春来般顺心应时。我看一点也不难相信，这就是他人格的魅力：他一出现，就足以让在痛苦中煎熬的灵魂获得安宁；摸一下他的手或衣服，便能把痛楚忘却；他在生活之路上行过，那些对生活的玄妙视而不见的人便心明眼亮，而那些两耳充斥着享乐的靡靡之音的人，便第一次听到爱的声音，觉得那声音如“阿波罗的琴声般悦耳”；他走来，罪恶的情欲便遁逃无影，而那些生活暗淡想象力阙如的人们，便像死而复生一样，从坟墓中随他的召唤站立起来；他在山边讲道，众人听着便忘了饥渴和尘世的纷扰；他坐在餐桌边，聆听他教诲的朋友们便觉得粗茶淡饭也成了美味佳肴，白水喝着犹如美酒，整个屋子弥漫着甘松油的甜香[98b]。
