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| 2013/02/05 09:25:40瀏覽159｜回應0｜推薦10 | |
| Excerpt：Cities of the Mind from Bloom’s Literary Places 《布魯姆文學地圖譯叢》總序：心靈之城 哈羅德·布魯姆 (Harold Bloom)，美國耶魯大學教授，是當代知名的文學批評家，相信不少人都已經拜讀過他寫的《西方正典》。 布魯姆主編了一系列的文學地圖，包含了 Paris、London、New York、Rome、Dublin 以及 St. Petersburg，這一套書以城市和文學作為主題並進而勾勒出其發展的歷史，相關人物的介紹都非常簡潔中肯，個人覺得相當值得推薦。 以下摘要自布魯姆所寫的〈總序〉，以心靈之城來稱呼這些城市確實巧妙，當我們心繫何時可以前往巴黎、倫敦、羅馬…這些繁華古城旅遊之際，或者也可以直接安排一趟心靈之旅，就藉由這些文學地圖的閱讀，「緬懷它們歷史悠久但依然燦爛的古老的文學藝術」。 心靈之城 Cities of the Mind 可以這麼說，古代城市中，最能激發西方作家文學想像的不是雅典，亦非耶路撒冷，而是古埃及的亞歷山大。古希臘文化和希伯來文化在亞歷山大城融合並結出了累累碩果。所有藝術上有所造詣的西方作家，在某種意義上，都是亞歷山大人，無論他們是否意識到。普魯斯特、喬伊絲、福樓拜、歌德、莎士比亞、但丁都難能可貴地分享了其兼收並蓄的文化遺產。從公元前3世紀中期到公元3世紀中期，亞歷山大一直是精神和心靈之城。在那裡，柏拉圖和摩西未能彼此接納(那是不可能的)，卻彼此磨礪，催生了一種新意識，這種新意識已經有26個世紀的歷史了，我們今天才明白，它原來叫作“現代主義”。 It could be argued that the ancestral city for the Western literary imagination is neither Athens nor Jerusalem, but ancient Alexandria, where Hellenism and Hebraism fused and were harvested. All Western writers of authentic aesthetic eminence are Alexandrians, whether they know it or not. Proust and Joyce, Flaubert and Goethe, Shakespeare and Dante rather uneasily share in that eclectic heritage. From the mid third century before the Common Era through the mid third century after, Alexandria was the city of the spirit and mind, where Plato and Moses did not reconcile (which would be impossible) but abrasively stimulated a new kind of sensibility, that we have learned to call Modernism, now twenty-six centuries old. ...... 如今的雅典，除了奧運會和旅遊業還能帶給它些許生氣之外，在其他方面都死氣沉沉，而耶路撒冷則由於以色列和阿拉伯國家之間的衝突而顯得過於喧囂。哀哉，它們昔日的輝煌早已不再。連羅馬也未能倖免，維吉爾乃至佛羅倫薩的但丁也被冷落多年，極少有人流覽問津。雖然巴黎和倫敦可能也在日漸式微，但仍然是數得著的心靈之城。當今的國際通用語是美國英語，紐約也因此成為文學名城中的名城。這當然有利有弊，讓我想起了古城亞歷山大，曾經風華絕代，終歸美人遲暮。儘管我們懷著複雜的心情為新興的文學名城而欣喜，但亞歷山大的影子仍縈繞在我們心頭，揮之不去。 Athens now slumbers except for Olympic games and tourism, while Jerusalem is all too lively as the center of Israeli-Arab contention. Alas, their literary glories have waned, but so have those of Rome, where Vergil and even the Florentine Dante are little read or emulated. Cities of the mind are still represented by Paris and London, both perhaps at this moment in cognitive decline. The international language is now American English, and New York City is therefore the literary place of places. That, of necessity, has mixed consequences, but those sharpen my renewed comparison to ancient Alexandria, which mingled inventiveness with high decadence, at the end of an age. Alexandria was consciously belated and so are we, despite our paradoxical ecstasy of the new. ...... 就他們的職業而言，文學大師總是喜歡遠離塵世，但他們的內心卻渴望在當時的文學藝術界找到自己的知音，也許對手之間存在無法阻擋的吸引力。這樣的例子很多，僅在正統英美文學史上就有如下數對:莎士比亞和本·瓊森、拜倫和雪萊、霍桑和麥爾維爾、海明威和菲茨傑拉德、艾略特和龐德、哈特·克萊恩和艾倫·泰特。別處也一樣，歌德和席勒、華茲華斯和柯勒律治、斯威夫特和蒲柏、托爾斯泰和契科夫、亨利·詹姆斯和伊迪斯·華頓等，不勝枚舉。他們的緣分也和地域有關，如海明威和菲茨傑拉德都曾僑居巴黎，拜倫和雪萊都曾在義大利流亡，艾略特和龐德都曾以倫敦為家。當然也有例外，如塞萬提斯、彌爾頓、維克多·雨果、艾米莉·狄金森、喬伊絲、貝克特，他們除了早年曾與文學圈有些交往之外，後來一直深居簡出。 However solitary a major writer is by vocation, he or she tends to find a closest friend in a contemporary literary artist. Perhaps rivals attract: Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Byron and Shelley, Hawthorne and Melville, Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, Eliot and Pound, Hart Crane and Allen Tate are just a few pairings, to stay within Anglo-American tradition. Yet the tendency is everywhere: Goethe and Schiller, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Swift and Pope, Tolstoy and Chekhov, Henry James and Edith Wharton, and many more, too numerous to list. The locales waver: Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Paris, Byron and Shelley in Italian exile together, Eliot and Pound in London. There are giant exceptions: Cervantes, Milton, Victor Hugo, Emily Dickinson, Joyce and Beckett (though only after their early association). ...... 即使在當今的電腦時代，地域的臨近性依然是文學家建立親密關係的必要條件。到目前為止，我僅僅從作家與文學名城的關係上討論了城市的重要性。事實上，城市是文學的主題，更是文學必不可少的元素。從這方面來看，城市更加重要。希伯來文《聖經》清晰地揭示了文學焦點從田園到城市的轉移過程。耶和華從西奈山遷到錫安山，進而移至所羅門的神殿。西奈山是耶和華向教徒宣佈誓約的地方，因此它是希伯來宗教的發源地，但讓人感到驚奇的是，按照《以西結書》，伊甸園，即上帝之園，位於錫安山的高原之上。錫安山既是一座確實存在的高山，也是教徒心中的天堂。耶和華最終在神殿定居，雖然伊甸園近在咫尺，卻完成了從田園到城市的轉換。這就是聖城。在作家的眼中，所有的大城市都是神聖的。巴黎、倫敦、都柏林、聖彼德堡、羅馬和紐約都閃耀著神性的光輝。在這光輝籠罩之下，它們在世間所經歷的所有磨難，所有屈辱也就隨風而去，蕩然無存了。 Even in the age of the computer screen, proximity is essential for literary fellowship. But so far I have considered the city as literary place only in regard to writers. As subject, indeed as the given of literature, the city is a larger matter. The movement from garden to city as literary focus is powerfully clear in the Hebrew Bible, when Yahweh moves his abode from Mount Sinai to Mount Zion, and thus to Solomon’s Temple. As the mountain of the Covenant, Sinai stands at the origin, but surprisingly Ezekiel (28:13 following) locates “Eden, the garden of God” as a plateau on Zion, both cosmological mountain and paradise. When Yahweh takes up residence in the Temple, his Eden is close by, yet nevertheless the transition from garden to city has been accomplished. This is the Holy City, but to the literary imagination all the great cities are sacred: Paris, London, Dublin, Petersburg, Rome, and New York are also sanctified, whatever suffering and inequity transpire in them. ...... 19世紀城市的工業化為維克多·雨果、狄更斯和左拉提供了創作驚世駭俗的現實主義小說的土壤，如今這種土壤已難見蹤跡。資訊技術時代的都市似乎不可能激發作家的文學想像力。過度的視覺衝擊遮蔽了內在心靈的眼睛，使我們無視小說的敍事藝術以及詩歌和戲劇的形式美。時光流轉，轉眼已到了21世紀。撫今追昔，不禁感慨萬千。在這樣的時刻，我們也許可以重新喚醒人們對這些文學名城的記憶，緬懷它們歷史悠久但依然燦爛的古老的文學藝術。 The industrialization of the great cities in the nineteenth century gave us the novels of Victor Hugo, Dickens, Zola which produced a realism totally phantasmagoric, now probably no longer available to us. Computer urbanism does not seem likely to stimulate imaginative literature. Visual overdetermination overwhelms the inward eye and abandons us to narrative or the formal splendors of poetry and drama. There is something hauntingly elegiac about fresh evocations of literary places, here and now in the early years of the Twenty-first century. |
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| ( 知識學習｜隨堂筆記 ) |
