98
99
Renan in his Vie de Jésus—that gracious Fifth Gospel, the Gospel according to St Thomas one might call it—says somewhere that Christ’s great achievement was that he made himself as much loved after his death as he had been during his lifetime.[99.1] And certainly, if his place is among the poets, he is the leader of all the lovers[99a]. He saw that love was that lost secret of the world for which the wise men had been looking, and that it was only through love that one could approach either the heart of the leper or the feet of God.
勒南写了《耶稣的一生》——那部优美的第五福音书，照圣托马斯所言可说是只此一部的福音书——他在书中某处说了，耶稣伟大的成就，在于使自己死后如同生前一样受人爱戴。当然，倘若他是诗人的同道，那更是天下有爱心之人的魁首[99a]。他看到，爱就是世界失去的那个真意，贤哲在寻找的那个真意；他看到，只有通过爱，一个人才能到达麻风病人心间，或上帝跟前。
99
100
And, above all, Christ is the most supreme of Individualists. Humility, like the artistic acceptance of all experiences, is merely a mode of manifestation. It is man’s soul that Christ is always looking for[100a]. He calls it “God’s Kingdom”— ? βασιλεíα το? θεο?—and finds it in everyone[100b]. He compares it to little things, to a tiny seed, to a handful of leaven, to a pearl. That is because one only realises one’s soul by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions be they good or evil[100c].
而最重要的是，基督是个最高超的自为主义者。谦卑，就像艺术接受一切经验一样，不过是一个表现的方式而已。基督一直在找寻的是人的灵魂[100a]。他把这称作“上帝的国度”，在每个人心中都有的[100b]。他把这比作小东西，一小粒种子、一小团酵母、一颗珍珠。这是因为，只有在摆脱了所有与之不合的情欲、所有习得的文化、所有的身外之物，不管是好是坏，然后人才能领悟自己的灵魂[100c]。
100
101
I bore up against everything with some stubbornness of will and much rebellion of nature till I had absolutely nothing left in the world but Cyril. I had lost my name, my position, my happiness, my freedom, my wealth. I was a prisoner and a pauper[101a]. But I had still one beautiful thing left, my own eldest son. Suddenly he was taken away from me by the law. It was a blow so appalling that I did not know what to do, so I flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and wept and said “The body of a child is as the body of the Lord: I am not worthy of either.” That moment seemed to save me. I saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything. Since then—curious as it will no doubt sound to you—I have been happier. 碰到大小事情，我因为意志上有些顽梗、加上天性中的不少叛逆，向来是咬咬牙挺住，直到在世界上除了西里尔，我一无所有。 名声、地位、幸福、自由、财富，全失去了，人成了阶下囚、穷光蛋[101a]。但我还是有一样美好的东西，我自己的大儿子。突然间他又被法庭判走了。这个打击令我毛骨悚然，不知该怎样才好，于是跪在地上，低下头，哭着说：“孩子的身躯有如主的身躯，可我两样都不配得到。” 这一刻似乎救了我。我当下明白，唯一能做的只有接受一切。从那以后——你听了无疑会觉得奇怪——我心情便高兴了一些。
101
102
It was of course my soul in its ultimate essence that I had reached[102a]. In many ways I had been its enemy, but I found it waiting for me as a friend. When one comes in contact with the soul it makes one simple as a child, as Christ said one should be. It is tragic how few people ever “possess their souls” before they die[102b].[102.1] “Nothing is more rare in any man,” says Emerson, “than an act of his own.” [102.2] It is quite true[102c]. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation[102d]. Chris was not merely the supreme Individualist, but he was the first in History. People have tried to make him out an ordinary Philanthropist, like the dreadful philanthropists of the nineteenth century, or ranked him as an Altruist with the unscientific and sentimental. But he was really neither one nor the other. Pity he has, of course, for the poor, for those who are shut up in prisons, for the lowly, for the wretched, but he has far more pity for the rich, for the hard Hedonists, for those who waste their freedom in becoming slaves to things, for those who wear soft raiment and live in Kings’ houses. Riches and Pleasure seemed to him to be really greater tragedies than Poverty and Sorrow. And as for Altruism, who knew better than he that it is vocation not volition that determines us[102e], and that one cannot gather grapes off thorns or figs from thistles?
我所触及的，当然是自己灵魂最深处的本质[102a]。我曾多方与它为敌，没想到它却像朋友一样等着我。当人同灵魂相交时，就变得像小孩一样单纯，正如基督所要的那样。可悲的是，能在死前“拥有自己灵魂”的人，又有几个[102b]？“任何人当中，”埃默森说过，“最难得的莫过于出自本人的行为。” 这话还真不假[102c]。大多数人都是别人的人。他们的思想是别人的想法，他们的生活是对别人的模仿，他们的激情是袭人牙慧的情感[102d]。基督不仅是个最高超的自为主义者，他也是历史上的第一个。人们想把他说成是个一般的慈善家，就像十九世纪那些个窝囊的慈善家；要不就说他是个利他主义者，等同于那些不讲科学又自作多情的人们。但说实在的，他既不是这个也不是那个。恻隐之心他当然有，他可怜穷人、关在牢里的犯人、下等人、受苦受难的人，但更多得多的是可怜富人、死心塌地的享乐主义者、那些浪费自己的自由而沦为物的奴隶的人、那些身穿绫罗绸缎住着王宫侯宅的人。对于他，财富和享乐比起贫穷和悲哀来，似乎真正是更大的悲剧。至于说利他主义，有谁比他知道得更清楚，左右我们的，是神召而非心愿[102e]，在荆棘中采不来葡萄，在蓟丛中摘不到无花果？
102
103
To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his creed. It was not the basis of his creed[103a]. When he says “Forgive your enemies,” [103.1] it is not for the sake of the enemy but for one’s own sake that he says so, and because Love is more beautiful than Hate. In his entreaty to the young man whom when he looked on he loved, “Sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor,” [103.2] it is not of the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the lovely soul that wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one with the artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in Spring, and the corn burn to gold at harvest-time, and the Moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield[103b]. 为别人而活，作为一个确定的自我意识的目的，这不是他的教义。这不是他教义的基础[103a]。他说“饶恕你的敌人”，但这不是因为你敌人的缘故，而是为了你本人他才这么说的，还因为爱比恨美。他恳求那个他看了喜欢的年轻人，“去变卖你所有的，分给穷人。” 这时他心中想的并非穷人的处境，而是那年轻人的灵魂，那个正被财富糟蹋的可爱的灵魂。他的人生观与艺术家无异；这样的艺术家明白，遵循自我完善的必然法则，诗人非唱不可，雕塑家非用青铜思考不可，画家非以世界为他心绪的镜子不可。这道理千真万确，就像春天里山楂树必得开花，秋天里麦子必得金黄一样，就像月亮有条不紊地漫游天庭一样，何时如盘，何时如钩[103b]。
103
104
But while Christ did not say to men, “Live for others,” he pointed out that there was no difference at all between the lives of others and one’s own life. By this means he gave to man an extended, a Titan personality. Since his coming the history of each separate individual is, or can be made, the history of the world. Of course Culture has intensified the personality of man. Art has made us myriad-minded[104a]. Those who have the artistic temperament go into exile with Dante[104.1] and learn how salt is the bread of others and how steep their stairs[104b]: they catch for a moment the serenity and calm of Goethe, and yet know but too well why Baudelaire cried to God:
O Seigneur, donnez-moi la force et le courage
De contempler mon corps et mon coeur sans dégo?t.[104.2]
Out of Shakespeare’s sonnets they draw, to their own hurt it may be, the secret of his love and make it their own: they look with new eyes on modern life because they have listened to one of Chopin’s nocturnes, or handle Greek things, or read the story of the passion of some dead man for some dead woman whose hair was like threads of fine gold and whose mouth was as a pomegranate.[104.3] But the sympathy of the artistic temperament is necessarily with what has found expression. In words or in colour, in music or in marble, behind the painted masks of an Aeschylean play[104.4] or through some Sicilian shepherd’s pierced and jointed reeds the man and his message must have been revealed.
但虽然基督并没有对世人说，“为别人而活”，他却指出了他人的生命和自己的生命，其间一点差别也没有。 这样一来，他给了人一个外延了的、巨大的人格。自从他来后，每一个各各分离的个人的历史，就是、或者说就能够成为世界的历史。当然文化强化了人的人格。艺术使得我们心有千千重[104a]。有艺术气质的和但丁一道去流放，去了解他人的艰辛，去明白他们的困苦[104b]：他们有一阵领略到歌德的宁静与从容，然而心里对波德莱尔为什么会向上帝呼告又太清楚了：
啊，主啊，给我力量和勇气吧
让我看着自己的身体和内心而不厌恶。
他们也许是自作自受吧，从莎士比亚的商籁诗中得出他爱的真意，并把它变为己有；他们以新的目光看待现代生活，就因为自己听过了肖邦的一首夜曲；他们或者摆弄古希腊的东西，或者阅读某个死去的男人对某个死去的女人爱得神魂颠倒的故事，那女人发如金丝嘴似石榴。但艺术气质必定是与已然表达的产生共鸣。通过言语或色彩、音乐或大理石，在埃斯库罗斯戏剧的彩画面具背后，在某个西西里岛牧人的芦笛声中，人以及人的信息必定已经被揭示过了。
104
105
To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead. But to Christ it was not so. With a width and wonder of imagination, that fills one almost with awe, he took the entire world of the inarticulate, the voiceless world of pain, as his kingdom, and made of himself its eternal mouthpiece[105a]. Those of whom I have spoken, who are dumb under oppression and “whose silence is heard only of God,” he chose as his brothers. He sought to become eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and a cry on the lips of those whose tongue had been tied. His desire was to be to the myriads who had found no utterance a very trumpet through which they might call to Heaven. And feeling, with the artistic nature of one to whom Sorrow and Suffering were modes through which he could realise his conception of the Beautiful, that an idea is of no value till it becomes incarnate and is made an image, he makes of himself the image of the Man of Sorrows, and as such has fascinated and dominated Art as no Greek god ever succeeded in doing.
对艺术家来说，表达是他得以体察生活的唯一方式。对于他，没有声音的就等于没有生命。但是对于基督，情况就不是这样。靠着那令人肃然起敬的想象力，其宽宏其神妙，他把整个说不出话的世界、无声的痛苦世界，当作他的国度，使自己成为它永恒的喉舌[105a]。我提到过的那些人，那些无言地受着压迫，“沉默只有上帝听到的人”，他认他们为兄弟。他尽力要成为盲者的眼睛、聋者的耳朵、口舌被困者的一声呼喊。他期望的就是为有口无言的芸芸众生当一把号角，他们好向上天呼唤。靠着他那份艺术的天性——一个人具备了这天性，悲怆和受苦就成了实现自己对美的观念的方式——他感觉到一个理念，要是没道成肉身化作形象，便没有价值，于是就让自己化成了悲怆之人的形象。正因为此，艺术为之倾倒，尊他为上，而纵观希腊诸神，哪个也没能如此独领风骚过。105
106
For the Greek gods, in spite of the white and red of their fair fleet limbs, were not really what they appeared to be. The curved brow of Apollo was like the sun’s disk crescent over a hill at dawn, and his feet were as the wings of the morning, but he himself had been cruel to Marsyas[106.1] and had made Niobe childless [106.2]: in the steel shields of the eyes of Pallas there had been no pity for Arachne[106.3] [106a]: the pomp and peacocks of Hera were all that was really noble about her[106.4]: and the Father of the Gods himself had been too fond of the daughters of men. The two deep suggestive figures of Greek mythology were, for religion, Demeter, an earth-goddess, not one of the Olympians, [106.5] and, for art, Dionysus, the son of a mortal woman to whom the moment of his birth had proved the moment of her death also.[106.6]
因为希腊的神祗，尽管他们有着好看伶俐的四肢，红白光鲜，却不见得真有外表那么堂皇。 阿波罗曲线型的前额，就像拂晓时分在山顶刚探出来的半轮红日，他的双脚像黎明的双翼，但他却对长笛对手玛耳绪阿斯心狠手辣，剥了他的皮，还杀死了尼俄柏所有的子女；那个别名叫帕拉斯的雅典娜，她钢盾般的双眼里却不见对阿剌克涅的怜悯[106a]；赫拉除了她的派头和孔雀外，没多少高贵可言；而众神之父本人，却对人间女子太过钟情了。希腊神话中深具暗示意义的有两个人物：对宗教来说是大地女神德美特，她不是奥林波斯山诸神的一员；对艺术来说是狄俄倪索斯，一名民间凡妇的儿子，他出世之时成了自己母亲去世之日。
106
107
But Life itself from its lowliest and most humble sphere produced one far more marvellous than the mother of Proserpina or the son of Semele[107.1]. Out of the carpenter’s shop aat Nazareth had come a personality infinitely greater than any made by myth or legend, and one, strangely enough, destined to reveal to the world the mystical meaning of wine and the real beauty of the lilies of the field as none, either on Cithaeron or at Enna, had ever done it.[107.2]
可是生活本身却从最卑下的底层产生了一个人物，远比普洛塞庇娜的母亲还是塞墨勒的儿子更令人可敬可叹。拿撒勒的木匠铺里出了个人，他比任何神话或传奇中的人物伟大不知有多少倍。够奇怪的是，他命定要向世界揭示葡萄酒的奥秘、百合花的真美，而喀泰戎山或恩那草地上的那些人，谁也办不到。
107
108
The song of Isaiah, “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him,” [108.1] had seemed to him to be a prefiguring of himself, and in him the prophecy was fulfilled. We must not be afraid of such a phrase. Every single work of art is the fulfilment of a prophecy. For every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image[108a]. Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy. For every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man. Christ found the type, and fixed it[108b], and the dream of a Virgilian poet, either at Jerusalem or at Babylon, became in the long progress of the centuries incarnate[108c] in him for whom the world was waiting.[108.2] “His visage was marred more than any man’s, and his form more than the sons of men,” [108.3] are among the signs noted by Isaiah as distinguishing the new ideal, and as soon as Art understood what was meant it opened like a flower at the presence of one in whom truth in Art was set forth as it had never been before. For is not truth in Art, as I have said, “that in which the outward is expressive of the inward; in which the soul is made flesh, and the body instinct with spirit: in which Form reveals”?
以赛亚的诗“他被藐视，被人厌弃，多受痛苦，常经忧患。他被藐视，好像被人掩面不看的一样”，对于他这就像自己一生的预示，而这预言也在他身上实现了。这句话我们绝不应该害怕。每一件艺术品都是一个预言的实现，因为每一件艺术品都是理念向形象的转化[108a]。人类的每一分子都应该成为一个预言的实现，因为每一个人，无论是在上帝还是在人的心中，都应该是某个理想的实现。基督找到了预示，并成就了它[108b]；一个弗吉尔诗人的梦，不管是在耶路撒冷还是在巴比伦，历经几个世纪漫长的演进，在世人等待着的耶稣身上道成肉身[108c]。“他的面貌比别人憔悴，他的形容比世人枯槁”，这是以赛亚注意到的一些迹象，用来辨别这新的理想。只要艺术一明白其中意义，便在那个前所未有地彰显了艺术之真谛的人跟前，绽开如花。难道不像我所说的吗，艺术的真谛即是“外形表达着内涵；使灵魂获得肉身，使肉体充满精神；以形式揭示内容”？
108
109
To me one of the things in history the most to be regretted is that the Christ’s own renaissance which had produced the Cathedral of Chartres, the Arthurian cycle of legends, the life of St Francis of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, was not allowed to develop on its own lines but was interrupted and spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance that gave us Petrarch, and Raphael’s frescoes, and Palladian architecture, and formal French tragedy, and St Paul’s Cathedral, and Pope’s poetry, and everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does not spring from within through some spirit informing it[109a]. But wherever there is a romantic movement in Art, there somehow, and under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. He is in Romeo and Juliet, in the Winter’s Tale, in Provencal poetry, in “The Ancient Mariner,” in “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” and in Chatterton’s “Ballad of Charity.” [109b]
对于我，历史上最令人遗憾的一件事是，基督本身的复兴，既然产生了沙特尔城的大教堂、阿瑟王记的传奇、阿西西城的圣弗兰西斯的生平、乔托的艺术、但丁的《神曲》，却不让按其自身的主线发展，反而被无聊的古典复兴打断了、破坏了。这古典复兴给我们留下了彼特拉克的商籁诗体、拉斐尔的壁画、帕拉第奥的建筑风格、重形式的法国悲剧、圣保罗大教堂、蒲伯的诗，以及各种来自外部、靠死的规则形成的东西，而不是通过某种精神的点化从内部跃然而出[109a]。但是不管何时何地，只要艺术上出现浪漫主义运动，不知为什么就有基督，或者基督的灵魂，以某种形式出现。在《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中，在《冬天的童话》中，在普罗旺斯人的诗中、在柯尔律治的《古舟子咏》中，在济慈的《无情妖女》中，在查特顿的《仁爱之歌》中[109b]。
109
110
We owe to him the most diverse things and people. Hugo’s Les Miserables, Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal, the note of pity in Russian novels, the stained glass and tapestries and quattrocento work of Burne-Jones and Morris,[110.1] Verlaine and Verlaine’s poems, belong to him no less than the Tower of Giotto, Lancelot and Guinevere, Tannhauser, the troubled romantic marbles of Michael Angelo, pointed architecture, and the love of children and flowers—for both of whom, indeed, in classical art there was but little place, hardly enough for them to grow or play in, but who from the twelfth century down to our own day have been continually making their appearance in art, under various modes and at various times, coming fitfully and wilfully as children and flowers are apt to do[110a], Spring always seeming to one as if the flowers had been hiding, and only came out into the sun because they were afraid that grown-up people would grow tired of looking for them and give up the search, and the life of a child being no more than an April day on which there is both rain and sun for the narcissus.
拜他之赐，世上才有如此丰繁的人和物。 雨果的《悲惨世界》，波德莱尔的《恶之花》，俄罗斯小说中的哀怜情调，伯恩－琼斯和莫理斯的着色玻璃窗、挂毡及其十五世纪风格的作品，魏尔伦和他的诗歌，这一切，都是属于他的，一如乔托的塔、亚瑟王的妻子和她的情人兰斯洛特、汤豪泽、米开朗琪罗那不安的浪漫主义雕像、尖顶建筑风格，以及对儿童和花的钟爱——因为对儿童和花，古典艺术的确没留出什么地方，足以让他们成长玩耍，但是自十二世纪至今，他们则不断地以不同方式于不同时候在艺术中出现，说来就来说走就走，完全是一派孩童与鲜花的样子[110a]：春天给人的印象，永远是花好像躲在了什么地方，又怕大人找他们不着，烦了，不找了，赶紧冒出来跑到太阳底下；而一个小孩子的生活，简直就像个四月天，又是阳光又是雨地洒在水仙花上。
