希腊人说，当玛耳绪阿斯——用但丁的一句最令人心悸、最有塔西佗味的话来讲—— “四肢从皮囊里剥出来后”，便没了歌声。阿波罗胜了。里拉琴征服了芦笛。但希腊人也许错了。我在许多现代艺术中听到了玛耳绪阿斯的呼号。那呼号在波德莱尔的诗中是苦涩的，在拉马丁的诗中是甜美而忧伤的，在魏尔伦的诗中是神秘的。在肖邦乐曲那延迟的解决和弦中听得见。在伯恩－琼斯画作的妇女形象中，在不断重现的脸上那挥之不去的不满表情中看得见。即使是马修? 阿诺德，他笔下的卡利克斯的歌以如此明快的抒情之美诉说了“甜美动人的里拉琴凯旋得胜”，以及那“著名的最后胜利” ——即使是马修? 阿诺德，他诗句中萦绕不去的困惑和苦恼这一不安的底蕴，也传出了不少玛耳绪阿斯的呼号。歌德和华兹华斯都无法为他排遣，尽管他先后追随了这两人，而当他要哀悼“色希斯”或者歌唱“吉卜赛学者”时，拿起来演奏他的旋律的便只有芦笛了。但是，不管那位古国弗里吉亚的半人半羊之神沉默与否，我是沉默不了的。我需要表达，就像那几棵黑沉沉伸过监狱高墙、在风中摇曳不安[133a]的树需要叶子和花朵一样。 在我的艺术和世界之间，现在有着一道深深的鸿沟，但在艺术和我之间，却没有。至少是希望没有。
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To each of us different fates have been meted out. Freedom, pleasure, amusements, a life of ease have been your lot, and you are not worthy of it. My lot has been one of public infamy, of long imprisonment, of misery, of Ruin, of disgrace, and I am not worthy of it either—not yet, at any rate. I remember I used to say that I thought I could bear a real tragedy if it came to me with purple pall and a mask of noble sorrow,[134.1] but that the dreadful thing about modernity was that it put Tragedy into the raiment of Comedy, so that the great realities seemed commonplace or grotesque or lacking in style. It is quite true about modernity. It has probably always been true about actual life. It is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the looker-on.[134.2] The nineteenth century is no exception to the general rule.
派给每个人的命运是不同的。自由、享福、愉快、安逸的生活是分给你的，而你却不配。分给我的是当众羞辱、长期监禁，是痛苦、毁灭、耻辱，而我同样也不配——无论如何，还不配。记得过去常说过，要是一个真正的悲剧临到我身上，我想自己也受得了，只要它裹着紫色的罩布、戴着高尚的悲怆面具；但现代性可怕的一点是，它把悲剧裹上了喜剧的外衣，这样一来，伟大的现实似乎成了或陈腐或丑怪或俚俗的东西。现代性还真是这样的呢。大概真实的生活总是这样的吧。据说在旁观者看来，一切殉道的壮举都显得低贱。十九世纪也未能免俗。
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Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style[135a]. Our very dress makes us grotesques. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour[135b]. On November 13th 1895 I was brought down here from London. [135.1]From two o'clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the Hospital Ward without a moment’s notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque[135c]. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was of course before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed, they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob[135d]. For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison, tears are a part of every day’s experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one’s heart is hard, not a day on which one’s heart is happy[135e].
我的悲剧点点滴滴都显得丑陋、低贱、令人反感、俚俗不堪[135a]。身上的衣服就叫我们变得又丑又怪了。我们成了悲怆的怪物、肝肠寸断的小丑，被特别装扮摆弄，来逗引人们的幽默感[135b]。1 8 9 5年1 1月1 3日，我从伦敦被带到这里。那天从两点到两点半，我得站在克列珀汉转换站的中央站台上，穿着囚衣戴着手铐，让天下人观看。一点也没预先通知，就把我从医院病房带出来。天上人间，那时就数我最丑最怪[135c]。人们看到我就笑。每来一班火车就增加一层观众。没什么比这更能逗他们乐了。这当然是在他们知道我是谁之前。等知道了之后，他们笑得更厉害了。我就这么半个小时地站在那里，冒着十一月的冷雨，面对一团讥笑连连的匹夫匹妇[135d]。在那次遭遇后的一年里，每天到了那个钟点，我都要哭，哭上同样长的那么一段时间。这事你听着也许不觉得有那么悲伤。对那些监狱中人，眼泪是每日必备的经历。在牢里，要有谁哪一天不哭，那是他的心硬了，而不是他的心喜了[135e]。
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Well, now I am really beginning to feel more regret for the people who laughed than for myself. Of course when they saw me I was not on my pedestal. I was in the pillory[136a]. But it is a very unimaginative nature that only cares for people on their pedestals. A pedestal may be a very unreal thing. A pillory is a terrific reality. They should have known also how to interpret sorrow better. I have said that behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. It were still wiser to say that behind sorrow there is always a soul. And to mock at a soul in pain is a dreadful thing. Unbeautiful are their lives who do it. In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?
现在呢，嗯，我真的开始觉得那些笑的人比我自己更可悲了。当然他们看到我时我并不在底座上让人仰望，而是套着枷锁在示众[136a]。但要是只对搁在底座上的人感兴趣，那是一个非常没有想象力的心性。底座可以是非常不实在的东西。而枷锁却是确凿不移的可怕现实。那些人本该也知道怎样更好地诠释悲怆。我说过了在悲怆的背后永远是悲怆。如果说了在悲怆的背后永远有个灵魂，那就更见智慧了。而嘲笑一个痛苦中的灵魂是件很卑下的事。谁做了这件事那他的生命就不复美好了。在世界那简单得出奇的经济秩序中，人们付出什么便得到什么回报，那些想象力不足以穿透不过是事物的表层而能心怀怜悯的人，对他们除了鄙夷，还能以什么怜悯作为回报？
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I have told you this account of the mode of my being conveyed here simply that you should realise how hard it has been for me to get anything out of my punishment but bitterness and despair. I have however to do it, and now and then I have moments of submission and acceptance. All the spring may be hidden in a single bud, and the low ground-nest of the lark may hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns[137a], and so perhaps whatever beauty of life still remains to me is contained in some moment[137b] of surrender, abasement and humiliation. I can, at any rate, merely proceed on the lines of my own development, and by accepting all that has happened to me make myself worthy of it. 给你说了我是怎么被转到这里来的，只不过是要让你明白，除了苦涩和绝望，要我从身受的惩罚中感受出别的什么，曾经是多难的一件事。然而，不得不这么做，不时地我经历了屈服和认命的时刻。单单一个花蕾，可以藏着整片春光，云雀在低处地上做的窝，可以盛着预报许多玫瑰色黎明到来的欢乐[137a]；所以，要是生活还留给我任何的美好，那也许就包含在某个屈服、落魄和羞辱的瞬间[137b]。不管怎样，我可以纯粹按自己的发展顺其自然，对身受的一切全盘接受，以此来使自己配得上这一切。
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People used to say of me that I was too individualistic. I must be far more of an individualist than I ever was[138a]. I must get far more out of myself than I ever got, and ask far less of the world than I ever asked. Indeed my ruin came, not from too great individualism of life, but from too little. The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life was my allowing myself to be forced into appealing to Society for help and protection against your father. To have made such an appeal against anyone would have been from the individualist point of view bad enough, but what excuse can there ever be put forward for having made it against one of such name and aspect[138b]?
人们常说我自为心态太浓了。现在我必须比过去任何时候更自为得多才是[138a]。我向自己索取，应该比过去任何时候都多得多才是，我向世界索取，应该比过去任何时候都少得多才是。的确，我之所以身败名裂，不是因为生活中自为主义太多，而是太少。我生活中那个丢脸的、不可饶恕的、永远是可鄙的举动，是让自己被迫向社会寻求帮助和保护，来对付你父亲。像这样寻求对付任何一个人，从自为主义的观点看本来已够不好了，但对付的是这样一种心肝嘴脸的人[138b]，又能有什么借口好说呢？
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Of course once I had put into motion the forces of Society, Society turned on me and said, “Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to. ” The result is I am in gaol. And I used to feel bitterly the irony and ignominy of my position when in the course of my three trials, beginning at the Police Court, I used to see your father bustling in and out in the hopes of attracting public attention, as if anyone could fail to note or remember the stableman’s gait and dress, the bowed legs, the twitching hands, the hanging lower lip, the bestial and half-witted grin. Even when he was not there, or was out of sight, I used to feel conscious of his presence, and the blank dreary walls of the great Court-room, the very air itself, seemed to me at times to be hung with multitudinous masks of that apelike face[139a]. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such ignoble instruments, as I did. I say, in Dorian Gray somewhere,[139.1] that “a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” I little thought that it was by a pariah that I was to be made a pariah myself.
当然，我一旦启动了社会的力量，社会就转过来对我说：“你向来是不是置我的律法于不顾，而现在又要向这些律法求助？ 你要让这些律法完整地执行到底。你要遵守你所求助的。” 其结果是我进监狱。在以警察法庭开始的那三次过堂中，我常痛感自己处境的耻辱和讽刺意味，看到你父亲里里外外的东奔西跑，以期引起公众注意，好像有谁还注意不到或记不住那副马夫的步态及装束、那两条罗圈腿、那双哆嗦不停的手、那搭拉着的下唇、那像禽兽一般愚鲁的呲牙咧嘴。即使他不在场，或不在眼前，我也感觉得到他的存在，法庭大厅那光秃秃阴惨惨的四壁，就连空气本身，我也不时觉得好像悬挂着那张如猿似猴的脸庞的各种光怪陆离的面具[139a]。肯定没人像我这样，遭到过如此下流的算计，跌得如此之惨。在《道林?格雷》的哪个地方，我说了“人在选择敌人时再小心也不为过。” 当时真想不到，正是被一个贱人搞得我自己也要成为贱人了。
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This urging me, forcing me to appeal to Society for help, is one of the things that make me despise you so much, that make me despise myself so much for having yielded to you. Your not appreciating me as an artist was quite excusable. It was temperamental. You couldn’t help it. But you might have appreciated me as an Individualist. For that no culture was required. But you didn’t, and so you brought the element of Philistinism into a life that had been a complete protest against it, and from some points of view a complete annihilation of it. The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand Art. Charming people such as fishermen, shepherds, ploughboys, peasants and the like know nothing about Art, and are the very salt of the earth. He is the Philistine who upholds and aids the heavy, cumbrous, blind mechanical of Society, and who does not recognise the dynamic force when he meets it either in a man or a movement.
怂恿我、逼迫我向社会求助，这是许多事情中的一件，使我如此看你不起，也使我因为迁就你而如此看自己不起。你不欣赏作为艺术家的我，情有可原。那是气质使然。你也没办法。但你本可以欣赏作为自为主义者的我。因为这并不需要任何文化修养。可你并不这样做，所以就把市侩的平庸带进了一个曾一心一意与这平庸抗争、以某些观点看是把它扫荡净尽了的生命。生命中的平庸并不意味着对艺术不理解。可爱的人们如渔夫、牧人、农民之辈，他们一点也不懂得艺术，可正是人群中的佼佼者。是市侩庸人的，倒是那些坚持并襄助社会那笨重冥顽、盲目机械的力量，而对一个人或一项运动的内在活力视而不见的人。
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People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But they, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approached them, were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. It was like feasting with panthers. The danger was half the excitement. I used to feel as the snake charmer must feel when he lures the cobra to stir from the painted cloth or reed-basket that holds it, and makes it spread its hood at his bidding, and sway to and fro in the air as a plant sways restfully in a stream. They were to me the brightest of gilded snakes. Their poison was part of their perfection. I did not know that when they were to strike at me it was to be at your piping for your father’s pay. I don’t feel at all ashamed of having known them. They were intensely interesting. What I do feel ashamed of is the horrible Philistine atmosphere into which you brought me. My business as an artist was with Ariel. You set me to wrestle with Caliban.[141.1] Instead of making beautiful coloured, musical things such as Salome, and the Florentine Tragedy, and La Sainte Courtisane, I found myself forced to send long lawyer’s letters to your father and constrained to appeal to the very things against which I had always protested. Clibborn and Atkins were wonderful in their infamous war against life.[141.2] To entertain them was an astounding adventure. Dumas pere, Cellini, Goya, Edgar Allan Poe, or Baudelaire, [141.3] would have done just the same. What is loathsome to me is the memory of interminable visits paid by me to the solicitor Humphreys in your company, when in the ghastly glare of a bleak room you and I would sit with serious faces telling serious lies to a bald man, till I really groaned and yawned with ennui[141a]. There is where I found myself after two years’ friendship with you, right in the centre of Philistia,[141.4] away from everything that was beautiful, or brilliant, or wonderful, or daring. At the end I had to come forward, on your behalf, as the champion of Respectability in conduct, of Puritanism in life, and of Morality in Art. Voila ou menent les mauvais chemins![141.5]
人们认为我把生活中的坏蛋带到餐桌边招待他们，并且乐于同他们为伍，这是很可怕的。但是这些人呢，如果从我作为艺术家的观点来接触他们，却具有令人愉快的暗示和启发性。就像与豹共餐，刺激的一半来自危险。我的感觉，耍蛇人肯定也有。他把眼镜蛇从装蛇的花布或柳筐里逗得动起来，使它随着他的逗引将颈部膨胀，身子抬得高高的，像溪流中悠闲飘荡的水草一般前后摆动。这些人对于我是色彩最斑斓亮丽的蛇。毒素正是他们完美的一部分。我当时不知道，他们日后攻击我时，是因为听了你的笛声，为了你父亲的钱。与他们相识我一点也不觉得惭愧。他们太有趣了。我确实感到惭愧的，是你把我带进去的那种可怕的平庸气氛。作为艺术家我要打交道的是埃里厄尔，你却让我与卡利班交手。非但没写出音与色俱佳的作品如《莎乐美》、《佛罗伦萨悲剧》和《圣妓》，我身不由己地被迫去写长长的律师信给你父亲，被逼去向我一直与之抗争的东西求助。克里伯恩和阿特金斯在他们同生活进行的不光彩的争战中表现出色。招待他们可是个惊世骇俗之举。大仲马、切利尼、戈雅、爱伦?坡、或是波德莱尔，也一定会这么做的。让我烦不胜烦的是想起那些个时候，你陪着去见律师汉弗雷斯，在那个咄咄逼人的阴森森的房间里，你同我没完没了地坐着，一本正经地对着一个秃顶的人说着一本正经的谎话，直憋得我叫苦不迭，呵欠连连[141a]。我发现同你的两年结交，使我落到这境地，不偏不倚就在市侩平庸的中心，远离一切美好、光明、奇妙、敢为人先的事物。到头来还得为你出面，维护行为举止的体面、生活的清白检点、艺术的道德规范。此乃邪路所达之处——Voila ou menent les mauvais chemins!
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And the curious thing to me is that you should have tried to imitate your father in his chief characteristics. I cannot understand why he was to you an exemplar, where he should have been a warning, except that whenever there is hatred between two people there is bond or brotherhood of some kind[142a]. I suppose that, by some strange law of the antipathy of similars, you loathed each other, not because in so many points you were so different, but because in some you were so like[142b]. In June 1893 when you left Oxford, without a degree and with debts, petty in themselves, but considerable to a man of your father’s income, your father wrote you a very vulgar, violent and abusive letter. The letter you sent him in reply was in every way worse[142c], and of course far less excusable, and consequently you were extremely proud of it. I remember quite well your saying to me with your most conceited air that you could beat your father “at his own trade.” Quite true. But what a trade! What a competition! You used to laugh and sneer at your father for retiring from your cousin’s house where he was living in order to write filthy letters to him from a neighbouring hotel. You used to do just the same to me. You constantly lunched with me at some public restaurant, sulked or made a scene during luncheon, and then retired to White’s Club and wrote me a letter of the very foulest character. The only difference between you and your father was that after you had dispatched your letter to me by special messenger, you would arrive yourself at my rooms some hours later, not to apologise, but to know if I had ordered dinner at the Savoy, and if not, why not. Sometimes you would actually arrive before the offensive letter had been read. I remember on one occasion you had asked me to invite to luncheon at the Café Royal two of your friends, one of whom I had never seen in my life. I did so, and at you special request ordered beforehand a specially luxurious luncheon to be prepared. The chef, I remember, was sent for, and particular instructions given about the wines[142d]. Instead of coming to luncheon you sent me at the Café an abusive letter, timed so as to reach me after we had been waiting half an hour for you. I read the first line, and saw what it was, and putting the letter in my pocket, explained to your friends that you were suddenly taken ill, and that the rest of the letter referred to your symptoms. In point of fact I did not read the letter till I was dressing for dinner at Tite Street that evening. As I was in the middle of its mire, wondering with infinite sadness how you could write letters that were really like the froth and foam on the lips of an epileptic, my servant came in to tell me that you were in the hall and were very anxious to see me for five minutes. I at once sent down and asked you to come up. You arrived, looking I admit very frightened and pale, to beg my advice and assistance, as you had been told that a man from Lumley, the solicitor, had been enquiring for you at Cadogan Place, and you were afraid that your Oxford trouble or some new danger was threatening you. I consoled you, told you, what proved to be the case, that it was merely a tradesman’s bill probably, and let you stay to dinner, and pass your evening with me. You never mentioned a single word about your hideous letters, nor did I. I treated it as simply an unhappy symptom of an unhappy temperament. The subject was never alluded to. To write to me a loathsome letter at 2.30, and fly to me for help and sympathy at 7.15 the same afternoon, was a perfectly ordinary occurrence in your life. You went quite beyond your father in such habits, as you did in others. When his revolting letters to you were read in open Court he naturally felt ashamed and pretended to weep. Had your letters to him been read by his own Counsel still more horror and repugnance would have been felt by everyone. Nor was it merely in style that you “beat him at his own trade,” but in mode of attack you distanced him completely[142e]. You availed yourself of the public telegram, and the open postcard. I think you might have left such modes of annoyance to people like Alfred Wood[142.1] whose sole source of income it is. Don’t you? What was a profession to him and his class was a pleasure to you, and a very evil one. Nor have you given up you horrible habit of writing offensive letters, after all that has happened to me through them and for them. You still regard it as one of your accomplishments, and you exercise it on my friends, on those who have been kind to me in prison like Robert Sherard and others. That is disgraceful of you. When Robert Sherard heard from me that I did not wish you to publish any article on me in the Mercure de France, with or without letters, you should have been grateful to him for having ascertained my wishes on the point, and for having saved you from, without intending it, inflicting more pain on me than you had done already. You must remember that a patronising and Philistine letter about “fair play” for a “man who is down” is all right for an English newspaper. It carries on the old traditions of English journalism in regard to their attitude towards artists. But in France such a tone would have exposed me to ridicule and you to contempt. I could not have allowed any article till I had known its aim, temper, mode of approach and the like. In art good intentions are not of the smallest value. All bad art is the result of good intentions.
