让我们停下来思考一下，这究竟意味着什么？这意味着我们必须保卫智识。当初纳粹党刚刚攫取权力的时候，戈林曾对他们的哲学做过一个精准的概括，他宣称：“只要有人在我面前提到‘智识’，我就要掏出左轮手枪。”而且这种哲学并不是德国人特有的，当时整个欧洲的文化界都在争相指责智识过度的危害和知识分子的缺陷。知识分子们自己也欣然参与到这场攻击之中。直觉的哲学在各处大行其道，与其相伴而生的还有重情感而轻理智的浪漫主义谬论，就好像这两者能被分开一样。然后战争就爆发了，我们随即战败。维希政权告诉我们，智识要为战败负主要责任。我们的农民读了太多的普鲁斯特。而且，所有人都知道，《巴黎晚报》、费南代尔和贸易联盟的宴会，这些都是智识的标志。似乎那些让法国败亡的领袖之所以这样平庸，全是因为他们书读多了。
即使到了现在，智识仍然遭到冷遇，而这只证明敌人尚未被击败。只要你试图不带成见地去理解事物，哪怕仅仅是提到“客观性”这个词，你就马上会被指控为诡辩和装腔作势。不，我们不能这样！这种状况必须被改变。我深知智识过度可能会带来哪些危害，我也深知知识分子是个多么狡狯的物种，随时可能倒戈。但这些都不是正确的智识。我们在讨论的那种智识是以勇气为后盾的，那种智识在这四年里付出了一切所要付出的代价，以守住自己的尊严。如果那种智识被彻底消灭，独裁的暗夜就要降临。这就是为什么我们必须要保卫它，保卫它所有的责任和权利。当且仅当我们做到了这一点，“法国式的友谊”才能有意义。因为友谊是一种唯自由人才能获取的学问，而智识和彼此间的相互理解则是自由的必要前提。
最后，我想直接对今天来到这场集会的学生朋友们说几句话。我无意向你们宣扬美德。有太多的法国人将美德和冷酷无情混为一谈了。如果我有任何权利这样做的话，我宁可向你们宣扬激情。但我实际上希望的是，那些将在未来代表法国智识界的人，至少能下决心永远不会在下面一两件事上投降。我希望，当别人告诉他们说，智识永远不讨好，或是人可以为了成功而说谎的时候，他们不要屈从于这些说辞。我希望，他们不要屈从于轻信、暴力或是惰性。到了那时，或许“法国式的友谊”便可以不再仅仅是一纸空文。到了那时，或许在一个自由而充满激情地拥抱真理的国度里，人们便可以再次开始对彼此心怀那种珍贵的情感，而只有那种情感，才能让世界免于沦为一片巨大的死寂。
面包与自由
如果把我们刚刚指出的那些背信弃义和敲诈勒索的案例放到一起来看的话，我们可以预料，总有一天欧洲会被集中营充满，所有人都会被关起来，除了那些狱卒，于是他们将不得不互相关押。到最后只剩下一个人的时候，他就会被称作“至高狱卒”。在这样一个理想社会里，“反对派”这个让所有二十世纪政府感到困扰的难题，将一劳永逸地得到解决。
当然，这只是一个预言而已。尽管世界各国的政府和警察机关都怀着极大的善意，力图实现这个幸福的局面，但我们距离实现它还很遥远。比方说，目前在我们这些西欧国家里，自由还是会受到官方的赞许。但这种自由总让我想到某些中产阶级家庭的穷苦女亲戚。她成了寡妇，失去了她天然的保护者。于是，这个家庭好心地收留她，让她住进顶楼的房间，家里的厨房也向她敞开大门。有时，她会在礼拜日被拉出去公开展览一圈，以证明这家主人的善良慷慨，没干什么不可告人的勾当。但在其他一切事情上，特别是在重要的场合，她都被要求缄口不言。另外，即使某个警察一时兴起，在黑暗的角落里对她动手动脚，也没人会太放在心上，因为她之前也不是没遇到过类似的事情，特别是在一家之主那里。而且，毕竟，为了这点小事去找执法机关的麻烦太不值当了。我们必须承认，在东方，人们要更坦率。他们会直接把女亲戚关进小储藏室里，然后插上两条结实的门闩，从而一劳永逸地解决所有关于她的麻烦。看上去，约莫五十年后她就会被放出来，到那时理想社会将被彻底建成。然后，人们还会以她的名义举办庆典。但在我看来，那时她可能已经变成一个风烛残年的老古董了，我非常怀疑她是否还能有一星半点的剩余价值。如果我们停下来思考这两种关于自由的观念，即储藏室那种和厨房那种，并决定强行把两者合并到一起，并在所有这些喧哗之中被迫进一步压缩这位女亲戚的活动空间，就马上可以看出，充斥在我们历史中的是奴役而非自由，而我们所生活其间的这个世界也正是如此。每天早上，这个丑陋的世界都从我们阅读的晨间报纸里一跃而出，直扑到我们面前，让我们日日夜夜都始终被愤恨和厌恶填满。
最简单，因此也最具诱惑力的做法就是去责怪政府，或是某些隐秘势力的放肆行径。何况他们也的确有罪，他们的罪责如此根深蒂固，以至于我们已经忘记是如何开始的了。但他们并非唯一应为此负责的人。毕竟，倘若自由始终必须依赖政府的鼓励才能茁壮成长，那么它很可能至今仍在摇篮里，或者早已被埋葬了，墓碑上刻着“另一个小天使去了天堂”的字样。据我所知，从来没有人声称由金钱和剥削所主导的社会确保了自由与公正的胜利；也从来没有人怀疑过，警察国家会将法律学堂开设在他们用来刑讯逼供的地窖里。于是，当他们压迫和剥削的时候，就仅仅是在履行自己的职责而已。如果有人盲目到将保护自由的工作托付到这些人手上的话，他就没有权利对自由随即遭到玷污表示惊讶。如果说，今时今日，自由被束缚和侮辱了，这绝不是因为它的敌人施行了什么狡计，只是因为它失去了天然的保护者。是的，自由成了寡妇。但我们还必须补充一句，这千真万确——让自由成为寡妇的正是我们。
关心自由的人是被压迫者，而它天然的保护者也一向要到被压迫者中去寻找。在封建制度下的欧洲，公社城镇成了自由的温床；一七八九年革命中自由那昙花一现的胜利也是城镇居民的功劳；十九世纪以来，工人运动始终捍卫着自由和正义的双重荣光，当时人们做梦都未想到去说它们二者之间的矛盾是不可调和的。无论是体力还是智力的劳动者，都共同参与到塑造并在这个世界上弘扬自由的事业之中，直到它成了我们一切思想的基石，像空气一样不可或缺却鲜少被我们特别注意，直到它突然被夺走，我们才发现自己命不久矣。如果今天自由在世界上的很大一部分地区都在逐渐退潮的话，这很可能是因为奴役的手段从未像今天这样被如此冷漠而精心选取过，或从未如此行之有效过，但同时也是因为自由的天然捍卫者们出于疲劳，出于绝望，或是出于有关“策略”和“效率”的错误观念而背弃了它。没错，二十世纪的大事件之一便是革命运动抛弃了自由的价值。从那一刻起，某种希望就从世界上消失了，于是每个自由人都陷入了孤独之中。
自二十世纪初，一种流言开始广为传播，并逐渐变得越来越有力量，即自由只是个布尔乔亚式的骗局。这个定义搞错了一个词语的位置，而我们今天仍然在为这个错位付出代价。正确的说法应该是：布尔乔亚式的自由是个骗局——而非所有自由。事实上我们只需要说布尔乔亚式的自由不是自由，或者在最好的情况下，只是自由的雏形。但有一些自由千真万确地需要我们去争取，并且一旦抓住就永远不能放手。诚然，对于那个白天被拴在机床旁边无法脱身，夜里则要与全家人挤在一个小房间里的男人来说，没有什么自由可言。但这个事实所谴责的应该是一个阶级、一个社会以及这个社会所施行的奴役，而非自由本身。如果没有自由，我们中最穷困的那些人就活不下去，因为即使社会在一夜之间改头换面，变得能让所有人体面舒适，它将仍然是野蛮的，除非自由得胜。仅仅是因为布尔乔亚社会谈论自由却不实践它，工人们的世界就该同样放弃实践自由，而只是因为自己并不空谈它而自豪吗？无论如何，混乱的确产生了，自由在革命运动中逐渐成了一个坏词，因为布尔乔亚社会把它用作骗局。人们开始只是合情合理地、健康地拒绝相信布尔乔亚社会对自由的挟持，而到后来他们开始不相信自由本身。在最好的情况下，自由被推迟到了遥不可及的未来，在那之前人们被禁止谈论它。他们给出的理由是我们需要首先实现正义，然后才轮到自由，就好像一群奴隶还能指望获得正义似的。还有些强硬的知识分子会向工人宣称，只有面包而非自由才是他们的利益所在，就好像工人们不知道他们的面包多多少少是因为自由而得到的。我们要承认，面对布尔乔亚社会中长期存在的不正义，走向另一个极端的诱惑是巨大的。毕竟，我们中可能没有哪个人，是从来不曾在行动上或思想上向这种诱惑屈服过的。但是，历史在前进，而鉴于我们目前所看到的东西，我们必须要停下来三思了。由工人们掀起的革命在一九一七年获得胜利，它标志了真正自由的降临，是这个世界上曾有过的最伟大的希冀。但这场革命在四周强敌环伺，面临内忧外患的情况下，建立起了一支警察力量以自保。于是这世界上最伟大的希冀便逐渐沦为世界上最高效的高压统治。与此同时，布尔乔亚社会那种虚假的自由却未被撼动分毫。
总的来说，我们所生活的这个世界是以那种犬儒主义的辩证法为特征的，它将不正义与奴役对立起来，并用其中的一方去加强另一方。当我们将戈培尔和希姆莱的朋友，第二次世界大战的真正赢家佛朗哥请进文化殿堂的时候，有人抗议说，佛朗哥的监狱里每一天发生的事情都在无情地嘲弄铭刻在联合国教科文组织宪章上的人权条款。对此，我们微笑着答道，波兰也是联合国教科文组织的成员国，而在公共自由这方面，两者其实是半斤八两。这当然是个愚蠢的论证！要是你不幸非得把你的大女儿嫁给一个前苦役犯队伍的头头，这也完全不构成你接下来应该将她的妹妹嫁给社会小组里最优雅的探员的理由，一个家庭里有一个败类就够多了。但这个愚蠢的论证却能生效，正如我们每天都能见到的那样。在令人作呕的“比烂”尝试之下，只有一件事情是始终不变的——受害者永远都是同一群人。自由的价值不断地遭到侵犯和冒用，于是我们注意到，在世界各处，正义也和自由一起遭到了亵渎。
要怎样打破这个极恶的循环呢？显然，只能通过立刻在我们自己和他人身上重新唤醒自由的价值，并永远不再允许它被牺牲或被与我们对正义的要求割裂开来，哪怕只是暂时。当下我们所有人的口号都只能是以下这句：在自由的层面上寸步不让，同时在正义的层面上寸土必争。具体来说，我们仍能保有的少数几项民主主义自由绝不是无足轻重的幻觉，我们必须强硬地捍卫它们。它们所代表的，恰恰是过去的两个世纪里所有伟大的革命胜利所留下的遗产。因此，它们绝不像诸多聪明的煽动家告诉我们的那样，是对真正自由的否定。并不存在一种理想的、会在未来的某天同时被给予全人类的自由，像一份在你生命行将结束时发放的养老金那样。只有需要一点一点地艰难战斗才能赢得的自由，而我们仍然拥有的这些只是前进路上的阶梯，它们当然远远不充足，但通向彻底解放的路径的确是由它们构成的。如果我们放任这些自由被压制，我们无法取得进步。相反，我们是在步步后撤和倒退了。而在将来的某一天，我们注定要重新沿着之前的足迹再度奋力前进，届时人们将再一次付出汗水与鲜血的代价。
不，在今天选择自由，并不意味着停止从苏联政权中获利，并向布尔乔亚政权那方投诚。因为那样反而相当于选择了被奴役两次，而且最恶劣的是，两次都是替其他人选择的。选择自由并不等于背弃正义，虽然有些人这样告诉我们。相反，今天选择自由，是关于那些在世界各处受苦和战斗的人的，而这便是自由的意义所在。在选择自由的同时我们也选择了正义，并且说实话，从今往后，我们无法只选择其中之一而放弃另一个。如果有人拿走了你的面包，那么他同时也压制了你的自由。然而，如果有人剥夺了你的自由，不用怀疑，你的面包一定也遭到了威胁，因为从此你的面包就不取决于你自己和你的奋斗了，而是取决于你主人的心情。纵观全世界，凡是自由消减的地方，贫穷就会增加，反之亦然。如果说这个残酷的世纪曾教会我们什么的话，那就是一切经济革命都必须是自由的，正如一切政治上的解放也必须要涵盖经济上的解放。被压迫者不但希望自己可以从饥饿中解脱，也希望可以从主人的宰制之下解脱。他们都很清楚，只有在他们可以成功抵抗和击退所有那些主人之后，他们才能在实质上免于饥饿。
在结语部分我还想补充一点，那就是，自由与正义的割裂就等同于劳工和文化的割裂，而后者是一切社会罪恶的缩影。欧洲工人运动面临的困惑，一部分就源于它失去了它那真正的、可以在经历一切失败之后为其提供抚慰的家园，即对自由的信仰。然而，与之相似的是，欧洲知识分子面临的困惑来自布尔乔亚和伪革命者共同制造的双重骗局，这骗局将他们与他们本真性的唯一来源，即一切人的工作和苦难割裂开来；将他们与他们唯一的同盟，即工人群体割裂开来。在我看来，称得上贵族的只有两种人：劳动的贵族和智识的贵族，而我现在知道了，试图让他们中的一方去统治另一方是多么疯狂和罪恶。我知道这两者共同组成了同一个高贵的整体，而他们的真理，以及最重要的，他们的有效性取决于联合。我知道如果两者被分开，他们就会放任自己逐渐被暴政和野蛮所压倒，但如果联合在一起，他们就可以统治世界。这就是为什么，一切致力于拆散他们的联盟、将他们分开的举动，都是在向人类和人类最高的希望开战。因此，所有独裁政权最关心的莫过于压制劳工和文化两者。事实上，两者都必须被噤声，因为暴君们非常清楚，不然的话其中一方总会为另一方振臂高呼。于是，在我看来，当下知识分子可能的背叛方式有两种，而这两种背叛都是因为他接受了同一个东西——劳工和文化的割裂。第一种背叛常见于布尔乔亚知识分子，他们希望压迫和奴役工人，以维持自己的种种特权。他们常声称自己在捍卫自由，但他们所捍卫的首先是自由赋予他们且只赋予他们的一系列特权[6]。第二种背叛则常见于那些自认为是左翼的知识分子，他们出于对自由的不信任，情愿在“服务未来的正义”这个虚假的借口下，将文化以及文化所预先假定的自由置于管控之下。在这两种情况下，无论是从不正义中得利的人还是叛变自由的人，都认定和支持了智力劳动和体力劳动的割裂，而这注定会让劳工和文化两者都变得苍白无力。他们同时贬低了自由和正义。
诚然，当自由主要由特权构成的时候，它侮辱了劳工并将他们与文化隔绝。但自由并不主要由特权构成，责任才是它最重要的构成部分。当我们中的每一个人都试图将自由的责任置于自由的特权之前时，自由就将劳工和文化联结到了一起，并释放出唯一一种能够促进正义的力量。我们行动的法则、我们抵抗的秘密可以被简单地陈述如下：一切羞辱了劳工的东西同时也羞辱了文化，反之亦然。而那革命的斗争，那长达数世纪的朝向解放的努力，首先可以作为一场持续的、对双重羞辱的抗拒而得到辩护。
说实话，我们还尚未完全摆脱这种羞辱。但时代之轮滚滚向前，历史在变化，而我敢肯定总有一天我们将不再是孤军奋战。对我来说，我们今天能聚到这里，这本身就是一个好的信号。各个工会的成员出于对我们的自由的关切而相聚，并准备着捍卫自由。这着实让我们有充分的理由从四面八方来到这里，来赞颂团结和希望。我们面前的路还很长，但如果扰乱一切的丑恶战争不致爆发的话，我们最终总会有时间来描绘我们所需要的那种正义和自由。但要做到这一点，我们今后必须平静而坚决地拒斥一切此前被灌输的谎言。不，自由不是建立在集中营或是殖民地那些被压迫民族的苦难，或是工人的贫困之上的！不，和平鸽绝不会栖息在绞刑架上！不，自由的力量绝不会强迫受害者的子孙们与马德里或其他地方的刽子手为伍！至少我们从今往后应该确信这一点，同时也要确信，自由不该是某个国家或领袖赠送给我们的礼物，而是一件我们必须每天都打起精神，齐心协力去赢取的珍宝。
Create Dangerously
An Oriental wise man always used to ask the divinity in his prayers to be so kind as to spare him from living in an interesting era. As we are not wise, the divinity has not spared us and we are living in an interesting era. In any case, our era forces us to take an interest in it. The writers of today know this. If they speak up, they are criticized and attacked. If they become modest and keep silent, they are vociferously blamed for their silence.
In the midst of such din the writer cannot hope to remain aloof in order to pursue the reflections and images that are dear to him. Until the present moment, remaining aloof has always been possible in history. When someone did not approve, he could always keep silent or talk of something else. Today everything is changed and even silence has dangerous implications. The moment that abstaining from choice is itself looked upon as a choice and punished or praised as such, the artist is willy-nilly impressed into service. ‘Impressed’ seems to me a more accurate term in this connection than ‘committed.’ Instead of signing up, indeed, for voluntary service, the artist does his compulsory service. Every artist today is embarked on the contemporary slave galley. He has to resign himself to this even if he considers that the galley reeks of its past, that the slave-drivers are really too numerous, and, in addition, that the steering is badly handled. We are on the high seas. The artist, like everyone else, must bend to his oar, without dying if possible-in other words, go on living and creating.
To tell the truth, it is not easy, and I can understand why artists regret their former comfort. The change is somewhat cruel. Indeed, history’s amphitheatre has always contained the martyr and the lion. The former relied on eternal consolations and the latter on raw historical meat. But until now the artist was on the sidelines. He used to sing purposely, for his own sake, or at best to encourage the martyr and make the lion forget his appetite. But now the artist is in the amphitheatre. Of necessity, his voice is not quite the same; it is not nearly so firm.
It is easy to see all that art can lose from such a constant obligation. Ease, to begin with, and that divine liberty so apparent in the work of Mozart. It is easier to understand why our works of art have a drawn, set look and why they collapse so suddenly. It is obvious why we have more journalists than creative writers, more boy-scouts of painting than Cézannes, and why sentimental tales or detective novels have taken the place of War and Peace or The Charterhouse of Parma. Of course, one can always meet that state of things with a humanistic lamentation and become what Stepan Trofimovich in The Possessed insists upon being: a living reproach. One can also have, like him, attacks of patriotic melancholy. But such melancholy in no way changes reality. It is better, in my opinion, to give the era its due, since it demands this so vigorously, and calmly admit that the period of the revered master, of the artist with a camellia in his buttonhole, of the armchair genius is over. To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing. Hence the question is not to find out if this is or is not prejudicial to art. The question, for all those who cannot live without art and what it signifies,is merely to find out how, among the police forces of so many ideologies (how many churches, what solitude!), the strange liberty of creation is possible.
It is not enough to say in this regard that art is threatened by the powers of the State. If that were true, the problem would be simple: the artist fights or capitulates. The problem is more complex, more serious too, as soon as it becomes apparent that the battle is waged within the artist himself. The hatred for art, of which our society provides such fine examples, is so effective today only because it is kept alive by artists themselves. The doubt felt by the artists who preceded us concerned their own talent. The doubt felt by artists of today concerns the necessity of their art, hence their very existence. Racine in 1957 would make excuses for writing Bérénice when he might have been fighting to defend the Edict of Nantes.
That questioning of art by the artist has many reasons, and only the loftiest need be considered. Among the best explanations is the feeling the contemporary artist has of lying or of indulging in useless words if he pays no attention to history’s woes. What characterizes our time, indeed, is the way the masses and their wretched condition have burst upon contemporary sensibilities. We now know that they exist, whereas we once had a tendency to forget them. And if we are more aware, it is not because our aristocracy, artistic or otherwise, has become better-no, have no fear-it is because the masses have become stronger and keep people from forgetting them.
There are still other reasons, and some of them less noble, for this surrender of the artist. But, whatever those reasons may be, they all work toward the same end: to discourage free creation by undermining its basic principle, the creator’s faith in himself. ‘A man’s obedience to his own genius,’ Emerson said magnificently,‘is faith in its purest form.’ And another American writer of the nineteenth century added:‘So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.’ Such amazing optimism seems dead today. In most cases the artist is ashamed of himself and his privileges, if he has any. He must first of all answer the question he has put to himself: is art a deceptive luxury?
I
The first straightforward reply that can be made is this: on occasion art may be a deceptive luxury. On the poop deck of slave galleys it is possible, at any time and place, as we know, to sing of the constellations while the convicts bend over the oars and exhaust themselves in the hold; it is always possible to record the social conversation that takes place on the benches of the amphitheatre while the lion is crunching the victim. And it is very hard to make any objections to the art that has known such success in the past. But things have changed somewhat, and the number of convicts and martyrs has increased amazingly over the surface of the globe. In the face of so much suffering, if art insists on being a luxury, it will also be a lie.
Of what could art speak, indeed? If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation. If it blindly rejects that society, if the artist makes up his mind to take refuge in his dream, art will express nothing but a negation. In this way we shall have the production of entertainers or of formal grammarians, and in both cases this leads to an art cut off from living reality. For about a century we have been living in a society that is not even the society of money (gold can arouse carnal passions) but that of the abstract symbols of money. The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favour of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man’s carnal truth is handled as something artificial. There is no reason for being surprised that such a society chose as its religion a moral code of formal principles and that it inscribes the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’ on its prisons as well as on its temples of finance. However, words cannot be prostituted with impunity. The most misrepresented value today is certainly the value of liberty. Good minds (I have always thought there were two kinds of intelligence-intelligent intelligence and stupid intelligence) teach that it is but an obstacle on the path of true progress. But such solemn stupidities were uttered because for a hundred years a society of merchants made an exclusive and unilateral use of liberty, looking upon it as a right rather than as a duty, and did not fear to use an ideal liberty, as often as it could, to justify a very real oppression. As a result, is there anything surprising in the fact that such a society asked art to be, not an instrument of liberation, but an inconsequential exercise and a mere entertainment? Consequently, a fashionable society in which all troubles were money troubles and all worries were sentimental worries was satisfied for decades with its society novelists and with the most futile art in the world, the one about which Oscar Wilde, thinking of himself before he knew prison, said that the greatest of all vices was superficiality.
In this way the manufacturers of art (I did not say the artists) of middle-class Europe, before and after 1900, accepted irresponsibility because responsibility pre-supposed a painful break with their society (those who really broke with it are named Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Strindberg, and we know the price they paid). From that period we get the theory of art for art’s sake, which is merely a voicing of that irresponsibility. Art for art’s sake, the entertainment of a solitary artist, is indeed the artificial art of a factitious and self-absorbed society. The logical result of such a theory is the art of little cliques or the purely formal art fed on affectations and abstractions and ending in the destruction of all reality. In this way a few works charm a few individuals while many coarse inventions corrupt many others. Finally art takes shape outside of society and cuts itself off from its living roots. Gradually the artist, even if he is celebrated, is alone or at least is known to his nation only through the intermediary of the popular press or the radio, which will provide a convenient and simplified idea of him. The more art specializes, in fact, the more necessary popularization becomes. In this way millions of people will have the feeling of knowing this or that great artist of our time because they have learned from the newspapers that he raises canaries or that he never stays married more than six months. The greatest renown today consists in being admired or hated without having been read. Any artist who goes in for being famous in our society must know that it is not he who will become famous, but someone else under his name, someone who will eventually escape him and perhaps someday will kill the true artist in him.
