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——鄧舒丹
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現(xiàn)代福斯塔夫
譯者：鄧舒丹
校對：崔穎
策劃：鄧舒丹 & 唐蕭
Falstaff Agonistes
現(xiàn)代福斯塔夫
Harold Bloom, literary critic, died on October 14th, aged 89
文學(xué)批評家哈羅德布魯姆于十月十四日去世，享年八十九歲。
注：仿Samson Agonistes 中文譯《力士參孫》 Agonistes：a person engaged in a struggle or combat
As he slumped in his chair, listening to some interviewer or student, Harold Blood could seem a very picture of gloom. His jowly head leaned lower over his hand; his eyes sank deeper in their dark circles; his impressive belly sagged outward with each breath. Inside that head reposed all Shakespeare’s works, both plays and sonnets; all the poetry of William Blake, including the most obscure; Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, and as much of the Bible as was composed in Hebrew. Besides a good deal else. He was a monument of memory and exposition, a rock round which eager pupils gathered. But to his mind he was also a tired creature who was losing, or had lost, a war. He was Samuel Johnson, best of critics, who nonetheless grappled with “vile melancholy” all his life. And he was Falstaff, the philosopher of Eastcheap, the charismatic larger-than-life spirit of misrule, who was rejected in the end by Prince Hal for simply offering him a teacher’s love.
哈羅德·布魯姆弓著背坐在椅子上，傾聽著某位采訪者或者學(xué)生，看起來十分憂愁。一只手低低的撐著頭，厚下巴，眼睛在黑眼圈的映襯下愈發(fā)凹陷。松弛的大肚子伴隨著呼吸一起一伏。這個腦袋里裝著莎士比亞所有的戲劇和十四行詩；威廉·布雷克的全部詩歌，包括那些最晦澀的詩篇；彌爾頓的《失樂園》，以及大部分希伯來語的《圣經(jīng)》。加之大量其它文學(xué)作品。他是記憶和闡釋領(lǐng)域的一座豐碑，他是靈石，贏得求知若渴的學(xué)生紛紛前往簇?fù)?。但對他來說自己還是一個疲憊的人，那個人正在輸?shù)粢粓鰬?zhàn)爭，或者說已經(jīng)戰(zhàn)敗。他是另一個塞繆爾·約翰遜，那個最優(yōu)秀的批評家，卻一生與“可憎的孤獨(dú)”斗爭。他是另一個福斯塔夫，東切普塞德的哲學(xué)家，魅力非凡, 充滿傳奇色彩的暴徒，那個向哈爾王子表其師之愛而被拒絕的人。
Goodness knows, he had reason to be discouraged. Over the decades that he had taught English literature, principally at Yale, he had found himself steadily surrounded by enemies. At first it was only the New Critics, F.R. Leavis, T.S. Eliot and the rest with their promotion of dry Anglican Metaphysicals and their hatred of the Romantics he adored: Shelly、Wordsworth、Keats.By the 1960s he managed to install his favorites on the syllabus again. Yet all around him the belief persisted that literature should be studied theoretically and reductively, for its structure and etymologies, as if genius could not appear and astonish out of a clear sky.My dear, as he would sigh to students giving him such piffle for the umpteenth time, that wouldn’t do.
上帝可以證明，他的沮喪絕非空穴來風(fēng)。他主要在耶魯大學(xué)執(zhí)教，教授英國文學(xué)，在幾十年的教學(xué)生涯里他不斷受到敵人的夾挾。剛開始只是新批評主義者F.R.利維斯、T.S.艾略特等人。后者推崇乏味的玄學(xué)派詩人而貶低他所欣賞的浪漫派詩人雪萊，華茲華斯，濟(jì)慈。在上世紀(jì)六十年代，他終于再次將自己熱愛的作家作品納入課程大綱。但是他身邊的人卻堅(jiān)持應(yīng)該將文學(xué)研究理論化，簡化研究范圍，注重結(jié)構(gòu)和詞源，仿佛世上不存在一鳴驚人的天賦異稟之才。當(dāng)學(xué)生無數(shù)次向他提出這等荒唐事之時(shí)，他嘆息道——親愛的，行不通啊。
Worse was to come. He watched American universities, even those of name, fall prey to a rabble of Marxists, feminists, pseudo-historicists and cultural-hegemonists, who forced their own programmes on to English deparments. His response, in 1994, was “The Western Canon”, a clarion-call that listed, from Dante to Moliere, from Freud to Neruda, from Chaucer to Beckett, the 26 writers considered central, and at the back the 3000 or so books that everyone should read. His list of writers are all- white and almost all male- inevitably, as he refused to be strong-armed into picking “rudimentary” African-Americans or “sadly inadequate” women. He was now in hot water indeed, especially with those female students he tried to seduce, Falstaff clumsily, with Amontillado sherry; but he ignored it. As a lower-class Jew, the son of a garment-worker, decidedly rare on the faculty of Yale, he needed no lessons in minority-sensitivity. That was beside the point.
更糟糕的還在后頭。他眼看著美國大學(xué)，甚至那些著名院校，淪為烏合之眾的領(lǐng)地：馬克思主義者，女權(quán)主義者，偽歷史主義者以及文化霸權(quán)主義者。這幫人將各自的計(jì)劃強(qiáng)行推入英語學(xué)院。為此，他做出的回應(yīng)是在1994年出版的《西方正典》。作為一種號召，從但丁到莫里哀、從弗洛伊德到聶魯達(dá)、從喬叟到貝克特，書中列舉了26位在他看來非常重要的作家，然后在書的背面，推薦了大概3000本必讀書籍。他的作者名單不可避免地全為白色人種，并且?guī)缀跏悄行?，因?yàn)樗芙^被迫去選那些“不夠成熟的”非裔美國作家，或者“可惜能力不足的”女性作家。他現(xiàn)在確實(shí)遇到麻煩了，尤其是他那福斯塔夫式的笨拙伎倆--- 用雪莉酒去引誘那些女學(xué)生；（面對非議）他卻不屑一顧。作為出生于底層社會的猶太人，一個制衣工人的兒子，這本身在耶魯大學(xué)教職人員中就非常罕見，他不需要關(guān)于少數(shù)族裔敏感問題的提醒。種族問題乃非重點(diǎn)。
The list of books caused a furious row too, as to what was on it and what not. His method had been simple: if a book survived a second serious reading, he included it.(He could read 400 pages an hour; it wasn’t so difficult .) People carped about contemporary relevance; but great literature, from Homer on, was always relevant.It reflected eternal verities of human life. A truly great book was not only an aesthetic pleasure; it also expanded cognitive power. It allows an experience of otherness, and the lives of others, that was impossible otherwise. From this the self could take what it found most useful, and grow. As Emerson said- Emerson, with the transcendental Gnostics being his sage, and “Self-Reliance” the creed he most approved of- some words even strike the reader as sublime truth that he had known before. Thus “God in you... responds to God without ”.
這些列舉的書籍也引起了很大的爭議，關(guān)于哪些在名單之列，哪些沒有。他的方法很簡單：如果一本書經(jīng)過兩次嚴(yán)肅閱讀的考驗(yàn)，則可以進(jìn)入名單。（他每小時(shí)可閱讀四百頁，并且這對他來說并不困難。）人們抱怨這些作品缺乏時(shí)代聯(lián)系；但是，自荷馬起，偉大的文學(xué)作品總是（與時(shí)代）相關(guān)。這些作品反映了人類生命的永恒真理。一本真正偉大的作品不僅具有美學(xué)價(jià)值，同時(shí)還拓展人類的認(rèn)知能力。真正偉大的作品讓我們體會在真實(shí)生活中無從體會的陌生經(jīng)歷和生活。一個人從這樣的書中汲取最有益的養(yǎng)分，繼而借之以成長。正如艾默生所說--- 他將先驗(yàn)諾斯替教徒作為心中的圣人，且極力推崇“自立”之說---有些話甚至能夠穿透人心，說出讀者心中已知的崇高真理。因此 “God in you...respond to God without”.
This had happened to him for the ?rst time when he was swept away by Hart Crane’s poetry in the Bronx Public Library. He was eight, and already perplexing his Yiddish-speaking family by reciting Blake’s “Prophecies” around the place. Now, as he read “O Thou steeled Cognizance whose leap commits/The agile precincts of the lark’s return”, the strange words burned. Eight years later it happened again, when he saw Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” and ?rst met Falstaff in the round ?esh, crying out his vitality (“Give me life!”) and his pathos. The writer who could create both Sir John and Hamlet, that quintessential ironist torn between thought and action, could be treated only with awe. He was God. Shakespeare, he wrote in 1998, had invented the modern concept of personality, the ?rst characters who overheard their inner selves and were changed by it. It mattered little what sort of man Shakespeare was, whom the Sonnets were addressed to, what his politics were. His in?nite art contained everyone. To the question “Why Shakespeare?” Professor Bloom’s answer was: “My dear, what else is there?”
在布朗克斯公共圖書館里閱讀的過程中，他深深地折服于哈特·克萊恩的詩歌，那是他第一次體會此番感情。當(dāng)他到處吟誦布萊克的《預(yù)言》時(shí)，年僅八歲，這已讓說第緒語的家人充滿疑惑。那時(shí)，當(dāng)他讀到“ O Thou steeled Cognizance whose leap commits/The agile precincts of the larks return”，這些陌生詞句仿佛在熾烈地燃燒。八年后，當(dāng)他觀看莎士比亞的《亨利四世》，第一次親眼目睹福斯塔夫吶喊出他的頑強(qiáng)（“give me life！”）和悲哀時(shí)，此情再現(xiàn)。莎士比亞既創(chuàng)造了約翰爵士又刻畫了哈姆雷特，那個在思想與行動中掙扎的經(jīng)典諷刺者，對于這樣的作家，我們必須敬畏。他于1998年寫下，莎士比亞是上帝，他創(chuàng)造了性格這一現(xiàn)代概念，在他筆下，人物第一次傾聽內(nèi)心的自我并因之而改變。至于莎士比亞其人、十四行詩為誰而作、他的政治傾向，此類均無關(guān)緊要。他的作品廣博深遠(yuǎn)，臨摹人世百態(tài)。對于“為什么是莎士比亞？”之提問，布魯姆教授回答：“親愛的，（除了他）還有別的人嗎？”
In that thought, the sense of a colossus whose work would never be bettered, lay the impulse for the whole enterprise of literature: for all the books stacked in his study, his shingle house in New Haven and his apartment in Greenwich Village, and laid up in layers in his brain. Each writer, he wrote in 1973, especially each poet, was engaged in an Oedipal agon, or struggle, against the in?uence of masterly precursors. Shelley had fought against Milton, Whitman against Emerson, Mailer againt Hemingway. Inner anxieties, not outside factors, drove them. Each needed to let their own lustre shine. Only the strongest could manage that clinamen, that Lucretian swerve of the atoms which achieved change. Those were the men and women whose works had to be read.
認(rèn)為一位文學(xué)巨匠的作品將永遠(yuǎn)無法被后人超越的想法是所有文學(xué)創(chuàng)作的動力之源：所有那些摞在他書房里的，位于紐黑文的木瓦房子里、格林威治的公寓里，以及大腦中存儲的文學(xué)作品。他在1973年寫道，每個作家，尤其詩人，都感到一種俄狄浦斯式的沖突、或者掙扎，渴望擺脫偉大先列的影響。雪萊抗?fàn)庍^彌爾頓，惠特曼抗?fàn)庍^艾默生，梅勒抗?fàn)庍^海明威。是內(nèi)心的焦慮，而非外在因素，驅(qū)使他們前行。每位作家都需要綻放獨(dú)特的光芒。只有最強(qiáng)的人才能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)“克里納門”，即盧克萊修式的、能夠?qū)崿F(xiàn)改變的原子偏移。我們必須閱讀的正是這些（實(shí)現(xiàn)偏移的）作家。
推薦書籍：《影響的焦慮》
And where was he on this battle?eld? At the forefront in some ways, with his books bestsellers and his name glorious or notorious in the celebrity realm of buzz. He was leading the charge to keep great literature alive: to ensure it was both read and, above all, taught in the universities, where he fretted that syllabuses might soon consist of Harry Potter and Batman comics. The Western canon was still his chief care, a tradition accrued over 3,000 years; let others add on, if they wanted, the Asians and the Africans. He worried, too, about the squandering of short and precious time. Intimations of mortality added to his Johnsonian bouts of sadness. He had great precursors; his successor was not obvious.
他占據(jù)這場戰(zhàn)斗的哪個位置？其作品銷量甚好，其人聲名遠(yuǎn)揚(yáng)，或者說在名人八卦世界里臭名昭著，從這個角度看來，沙場前線。他一馬當(dāng)先，延續(xù)偉大經(jīng)典之生命：確保大學(xué)讀經(jīng)典，教授經(jīng)典。他擔(dān)心大學(xué)課程不久將包括《哈利波特》、《蜘蛛俠》漫畫。他最關(guān)注的仍然是西方經(jīng)典、沉淀三千多年的傳統(tǒng)。讓其他人據(jù)其所好算上亞、非裔作家吧。他還擔(dān)心虛擲短暫、珍貴的光陰。死神的征兆更加顯現(xiàn)了他那約翰遜式的陣陣悲傷。在他之前，有偉大的文學(xué)巨匠；在他之后，強(qiáng)者寥寥。
Still, another hero, Rabbi Tarphon, provided a motto. “You do not need to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” He was busy teaching at Yale on October 10th.
如另一位英雄猶太教圣人拉比·他耳分所言，“You do not need to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” 十月十日他還在耶魯忙著授課。
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本文原載于 The Economist
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