送交者: 霍林河 于 October 06, 2007 11:00:26:
《艺海拾贝》是八十年代初出版的秦牧的一本散文集(为了证实一下记忆，上GOOGLE
查了一下，没错，八一年出版)。书中文章的内容几乎全都记不得了，但是当时购书、
包皮、盖印、阅读以及晚间躺在床上掩卷暇思那种感觉至今难忘。由于书，更由于
那段时光。如果能重度人生最值得留恋的岁月，我毫不犹豫地选择就是毕业前后：
充实、自由、自信，充满青春的激情而又有着未被世态污染的纯朴。即使是生活中
的欺骗，回忆起来也感受着亲切。
【艺海拾贝】应该是论坛上一个很好的专题，即可以是系统的读书体会，也可以是
偶得的只言片语，实在懒惰了(比如象我今天)，直接把原著引一段上来也未尝不可。
《The Romantic Definition of Man》是奥丹(W． H． Auden)为他所编的《浪漫诗
人》(Romantic Poets)所写的引言的一部分。奥丹在这里用人性注解浪漫，而又用
浪漫来描述人性的一个重要侧面，阅读之后对人性和浪漫又有了新的理解。本想把
它译成中文，试了几次终觉得力所能及。敲下原文与大家共赏(网上查不到原文)，
也算对悠悠引发的主义讨论的一个回应。
THE ROMATIC DEFINITION OF MAN. What is man? How does he differ from the gods
on the one hand and from nature on the other? What is the divine element
in man? A different set of answers to such questions, or a shift of emphasis
in the old answers, changes the style and subject matter of poetry and the
poet's conception of his function.
For example, in the age of the heroic epic the difference between gods and
men is that former are immortal and the latter must finally all die like
the beasts. In the mean time, however, some men are made godlike and separated
from nature by the favor of the gods, becoming heroes who do great deeds.
The poet, that is, the man inspired with the gift of tongues, celebrates
the hero and his acts.
In the middle age, the quality which man shares with God and which the creatures
do not have is a that can make free choices. What separates man from God
is sin: that he can and does choose wrongly, love himself, act selfishly.
The function the poet is to exhibit the human soul tempted by competing
loves, and to celebrate the ways in which she can be redeemed.
In the neoclassical period, the divine human quality is reason, the capacity
to recognize general laws, and the function of the poet is to celebrate
the Rational City and to pour acorn on its enemies.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century ─Rousseau is one of the first
symptoms ─a new answer appears. The divine element in man is now held to
be neither power nor free will nor reason, but self-consciousness. Like
God and unlike things as being other than they are, he runs ahead of himself;
he foresees his own death.
Holderlin's poem Der Mensch is as complete and clear a definition as any.
Soon he has grown up;
The animals avoid him, for other than
They is man, he does not resemble
Thee, nor the Father, for boldly in him
And alone are mingled the Father's lofty
Spirit with the joy, O Earth, and thy sorrow.
Gladly he would be like the mother
Of the gods, like all-embracing Nature!
Oh, that is why his restless spirit drives
Him away from the heart, O Earth, and thy gifts
Are in vain, and thy gentle fetters;
And he seeks better things, the wild one.
From the fragrant meadow of his shores, far out
Into the flowerless water, Man must go
And though, like the starlit night full of
Golden fruit his orchard gleams, yet he digs
Caves in the mountains and looks around the pit,
Deeply hidden from his Father's cheerful light,
Faithless also to the sun-god who
Does not love the slave and scoffs at troubles.
For more freely breathe the birds of the forest,
And though Man's breast rises with greater splendour,
And he sees the dark future, he must
See death too, and he alone must fear it.
If self-awareness and the power to conceive of possibility is the divine
element in man, then the hero who the poet celebrate is himself, for the
only consciousness accessible to him is his own. When Keats writes in his
letters that the poet is the least poetical thing in existence because he
has no identity, he is saying that the man of power who has this identity
is less human, more like the sun or the birds of nature, which can only be
themselves.
The romantic assertions of the supreme importance of art ─for example,
Blake's statement "Art is the tree of life. Art is the Christianity," or
Shelley's "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" ─are
not to be understood as vanity but as the inevitable conclusion to be drawn
from the presupposition that consciousness is the noblest human quality.
Similarly, the romantic definitions of the poet and the poetic imagination
─for example:
...a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as
if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which
are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet
(especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and
delightful) do more nearly resemble the passion produced by real events,
than anything which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men
are accustomed to feel themselves. (By Wordsworth)
The primary Imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of
all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of eternal
act of creation in the infinite I AM (by Coleridge)
seem meaningless so long as we think of the poet as a man with a gift for
writing verse. They define, not the writer, but the hero about whom he writes,
which for the Romantic are combined in the same person.
Thus, the subject of the greatest long poem of this period, The Prelude,
is not a heroic action like the siege of Troy, nor a decisive choice like
the Fall of Man, nor a threat to civilization like the Goddess of Dullness,
but the Growth of a Poet's Mind.