张旋的短篇作品

十五位被高估的美国小说家（原文） 注：这篇文章顺带也批评了美国学院派小说家，实际上，美国小说、诗歌和批评确实大大衰落了。罪魁祸首可能就是他们大学里的写作课教程，这个在多克托罗的访谈中已经讲了。风格变得过于细致，难以区分，而且内容甜腻、机巧，已经失去写作朴素的意义：省悟。 Are the writers receiving the major awards and official recognition really the best writers today? Or are they overrated mediocrities with little claim to recognition by posterity? The question is harder than ever to answer today, yet it is a worthwhile exercise to attempt (along with identifying underrated writers not favored by bureaucracy). It's difficult to know today because we no longer have major critics with wide reach who take vocal stands. There are no Malcolm Cowleys, Edmund Wilsons, and Alfred Kazins to separate the gold from the sand. Since the onset of poststructuralist theory, humanist critics have been put to pasture. The academy is ruled by "theorists" who consider their work superior to the literature they deconstruct, and moreover they have no interest in contemporary literature. As for the reviewing establishment, it is no more than the blurbing arm for conglomerate publishing, offering unanalytical "reviews" announcing that the emperor is wearing clothes (hence my inclusion of Michiko Kakutani). The ascent of creative writing programs means that few with critical ability have any incentive to rock the boat--awards and jobs may be held back in retaliation. The writing programs embody a philosophy of neutered multiculturalism/political correctness; as long as writers play by the rules (no threatening history or politics), there's no incentive to call them out. (A politically fecund multiculturalism--very desirable in this time of xenophobia--is the farthest thing from the minds of the official arbiters: such writing would be deemed "dangerous," and never have a chance against the mediocrities.) The MFA writing system, with its mechanisms of circulating popularity and fashionableness, leans heavily on the easily imitable. Cloying writers like Denis Johnson, Amy Hempel, Lydia Davis, Aimee Bender, and Charles D'Ambrosio are held up as models of good writing, because they're easy enough to copy. And copied they are, in tens of thousands of stories manufactured in workshops. Others hide behind a smokescreen of unreadable inimitability--Marilynne Robinson, for example--to maintain a necessary barrier between the masses and the overlords. Since grants, awards, and residencies are controlled by the same inbreeding group, it's difficult to see how the designated heavies can be displaced. As for conglomerate publishing, the decision-makers wouldn't know great literature if it hit them in the face. Their new alliance with the MFA writing system is bringing at least a minimum of readership for mediocre books, and they're happy with that. And the mainstream reviewing establishment (which is crumbling by the minute) validates their choices with fatuous accolades, recruiting mediocre writers to blurb (review) them. If we don't understand bad writing, we can't understand good writing. Bad writing is characterized by obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance. Good writing is exactly the opposite. Bad writing draws attention to the writer himself. These writers have betrayed the legacy of modernism, not to mention postmodernism. They are uneasy with mortality. On the great issues of the day they are silent (especially when they seem to address them, like William T. Vollmann). They desire to be politically irrelevant, and they have succeeded. They are the unreadable Booth Tarkingtons, Joseph Hergesheimers, and John Herseys of our time, earnestly bringing up the rear. Several of them have won the Pulitzer Prize in the last dozen years. Consider, however, the first 12 Pulitzer Prizes for the novel awarded between 1918 and 1930: Ernest Poole, His Family; Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons; Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence; Booth Tarkington, Alice Adams; Willa Cather, One of Ours; Margaret Wilson, The Able McLaughlins; Edna Ferber, So Big; Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith; Louis Bromfield, Early Autumn; Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey; Julia Peterkin, Scarlet Sister May; Oliver La Farge, Laughing Boy. Only Arrowsmith and The Age of Innocence belong there; Cather got it for one of her lesser novels. Some other books published in the same period that weren't deemed worthy of the Pulitzer: Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio; Willa Cather, My Antonia; John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel; William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, The Sound and the Fury; F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, Farewell to Arms; Sinclair Lewis, Main Street; and Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer. We can dismiss the early Pulitzer winners by claiming that a bunch of old white men probably decided back then. But the people deciding today are motivated by similar (though intensified) institutional compulsions. Awards are no substitute for critical judgment. It's also not true that only posterity can separate the good from the bad. In the 1920s, perceptive critics were aware of the difference. Readers know when a much-heralded book doesn't satisfy them. They know something is missing. But there's the institutional apparatus telling them, You're a fool if you don't appreciate this book. Well, I'm the biggest fool of them all, and here's my list, and watch for my list of the most underrated American writers today, followed by similar lists for the past century of American writers, and the most overrated and underrated global writers

谈阅读 作者：小泉八云 我曾经许诺要进行一系列，在教科书以外，或不是学校当局规定要讲的，有关文学创作与作品的讲座，内容尽可能地谈谈不同国家的文学作家的实际经验成果，我愿信守这一诺言。今天的题目就是阅读，从表面看，也许这是个简单的问题，但并不像它看上去那么简单，而且比你们可能认为的重要得多。作为这一讲的开始我要说懂得如何阅读的人并不多。若要培养出文学趣味与辨识力，这之前，需要大量的文学经验，缺乏这点，学会如何阅读几乎是不可能的。我说几乎不可能，是因为有极少数人虽然通过遗传的文学本能，天生有某种文学趣味，即使在满二十五岁前就能很好地阅读，但这些是例外，我是对一般人而言。 因为，能阅读一本书的文字或字母并不是真正意义上的阅读。你们常常发觉你们一边在机械地读文字，甚至发音很正确，同时脑海里想的却是完全不同的另一个问题。这种机械地阅读的情况常常在一个人的一生的早期出现，而且不管集中不集中注意力。不论是单纯为了个人消遣选取书中的叙事部分读，或者换句话说“为了看故事”，我都不能把这种情况称之为阅读。然而在实际生活中大部分阅读都是采用这种方式。每年每月我甚至可以说每天人们购买成千上万的书籍，可是他们根本不读。他们以为他们读书，他们买书只为了消遣，如他们自己说的：消磨时间，一两小时之内他们把买的书过一下目，对他们看过的东西心里留下一两点模模糊糊的印象；这，他们真的以为就是读书了。“你读过这样一本书吗？”没有比提这个问题更常见的了；或听某人说：“我读过这样或那样一本书了。”也没有比这种说法更普通的了。但这些人并不是在认真地交谈。一千人当中有说：“我读过这本书”或“我读过那本书”这类话的，大约并不是表示对他正在阅读的东西有值得一听的意见的人。一次又一次我听学生说他们读过某些书，但要是我问他们几个有关这本书的问题，他们就不能作出任何答复，或最多也不过是重复别人对他们阅读的东西说过的看法。但这种情况在学生当中并不罕见：这也是在一切国家里大多数人囫囵吞枣的读书方式。在结束这个开场白时，我要说大批评家与普通人之间的区别主要在于前者知道如何阅读，而后者则不知道。除非一个人能对一本书的内容谈出一点独到的见解，那就不能说他真正读过了这本书。 无疑你们会想这么说明问题是把阅读跟研究搞混了。你们也许要说：“要是我们读历史，哲学，或科学，那我们就读得很透，把书本上的全部意见及义理慢慢地一边思考一边钻研，这是苦读。但如果我们在课后读一篇小说或一首诗，我们就为了消遣。”我没有把握说你们都这么想，可是年轻人一般都如此。事实上，每一本值得读的书应该 恰恰像读科学书籍一样地去读——不单是为了消遣；每一本值得读的书，其中也含有像科学书籍那样同等的价值，虽然其价值的性质是完全不同类的。因为，归根结蒂，好的小说，诗歌，传奇，也是有科学性的，它们按不止一种科学的最好的原理写成，尤其是按生活的了不起的原理和人性的知识写成的。 对于外国书籍，尤其是如此；不过我们不是读用本国文字写的书，这个意见就较难遵循。你们以为有多少英国人真的读一本用英文写的好书呢？大约两个人当中不超过一个是思考他们所读的书的。不仅如此，虽然现在伦敦每年出版六千种以上的书籍，但是从来没有像今天的一般群众那样极少有好书可读。写书，售书，读书都是马马虎虎，或者说赶时髦。在文学上以及其他种种方面有一种风气，公众要求一种特别的消遣，有关方面就搞出一种特别的读物来满足需要。真正的优美的文学及其技巧，一本优秀的书的卓越思想对公众变成这么无用，以致文人几乎停止创作真正的文学了。要是一个人知道能通过写一本谈不上文体和美的书得到一大笔钱，同时他又知道如果他花上三年五载，或十年岁月创作一部真正的好书，结果也许反倒至于饿死，那他就被迫放弃他的崇高的职业责任感。如果有人的经济条件不错，他也许可能时不时尝试写点了不起的东西，但是它们几乎得不到知音。过去几年来趣味已败坏到如此厉害的地步，如我在前面告诉你们的，文体实际上已不存在， 而文体意味着思考。在英国，这种情况大部分是由阅读的不良习惯，由于不知怎样阅读而引起的。 一个搞学问的人首先要记住的是不应单纯为了消遣而读一本书。没有受过完整的教育的人为消遣而读，不要为此责难他，他们无法欣赏真正伟大的文学作品的深刻性。但一个受过大学按部就班的训练的青年就应在早期严格要求自己，不要仅仅为消遣而读书。严格要求的习惯一经养成，他甚至发现要为了消遣而读也不可能。那时他就会不耐烦地丢开任何他不能从中得到知识食粮的任何书籍，任何不能对他的较高层次的情感和理智产生吸引力的书籍。是另一方面，为消遣而阅读的习惯却对成千上万的人恰好像饮酒吸毒一样成瘾；它犹如一种麻醉剂，有助于消磨时间，使他维持一种梦幻的状态，造成毁灭一切思索能力的结果，只对精神的表层部分发生作用，而把感情的较深层的源泉和更高的理解能力弃之不顾。 让我简单地举出几个有关这种阅读方式的事实。例如有这样一个职员，他天天在上班或下班回家的途中阅读，单纯为了消磨时间，他读的是什么呢？当然，一部小说；这是一部非常容易的作品，它使他暂时忘记他的烦恼，使他的精神对日常一切小小的忧患麻木一下。一两天之后他把小说读完了，接着他又读另一本。那些日子他读得很快。到年底他已经读完一百五十到二百部小说；不管他多么穷，这种奢侈他还是能享受，因为有巡回图书馆。几年之后，他已经读过几千部小说。他喜欢这些小说吗？不；他会告诉你，这些小说差不多一模一样，但是它们有助于他消磨闲暇的时间；它对他成为一种必需；要是他不能继续保持这种阅读方式，他就会郁郁不欢。这样，除了使他的智力麻木不仁之外，完全不可能有别的结果。他在几千部小说中甚至记不住二、三十部的名称，更不说它们的内容。这些阅读的全部结果是心里一本糊涂账。这还是直接的结果，间接的结果则是智力停滞。所有的发展必然意味某种艰辛，智力停滞，其后果是患了医学上的萎缩症。 当然，这是个走向极端的例子，但如果这种为了消遣而阅读的方式形成习惯，而且有办法随时满足这种习惯，最终就会产生这种结果。眼下在日本这种情况的危险几乎还不存在，但我用这个例子作为一个心理范围内的警告。 这不意味着应该因噎废食，连好的文学作品也避而不读。一本好小说就是一种良好的读物，即便是最伟大的哲学家也可能愿读的。整个问题取决于阅读的方式，这甚至比读物的质量更有决定意义。或许常说的开卷有益这句话说得太多。简而言之，一本书的好处与其说由它的作者的艺术水平决定，不论这位作者多么伟大，不如说由它对读者的习惯产生的影响决定，后者无法比拟地更加重要得多。 在上一讲我请你们注意儿童的观察事物的能力比成人高明。这一点也可以从儿童的阅读方法上看出来。肯定地儿童只能阅读非常粗浅的东西；但是他读得非常彻底，他对他读的东西不断地想啊想；一篇短小的童话读后会占据他的心灵一个月。他的全部幼小的想像的精力会花在这个故事上；如果他的父母是明智的，他们就不让孩子读第二个故事，直到第一个故事的乐趣和它引发的想像的后果开始消失。后来的习惯，我敢说是不良的，会很快摧毁孩子真正的阅读注意力。不过让我现在拿一个以此为职业的读者，一个用科学的方式阅读的读者为例；我们会看到那同样的能力在他身上发展到一个相当巨大的程度。我经常走访的一个大出版公司，它每年要收到一万六千部稿子。所有这些稿子都必须审读并加以评定；这样的工作都由以此为职业的所谓编审做。这种职业性的读者一定要是个学者，一个具有非凡能力的人，一千部稿子他也许读不完一部以上，两千部他也许可能读三部。其余他只看几秒钟，看一眼就足使他决定稿子是不是值得一读。从文学的观点看，一句句子的句型就可告诉他这一点。至于题材，在很多情况下，甚至标题就足以使他判断出来。有些稿子可以吸引他一分钟或甚至五分钟的注意力；很少有原稿受到更长时间的考虑。在一万六千部稿件中我们可以假定最后选出来加以评定的是十六部。他把它们读完，读完后他决定只有八部可进一步加以考虑。这八部再被他读过一遍，比第一读仔细得多。第二次审查结束，只剩七部。这七部还需要第三读；可是编审明白最好别马上读。他把它们锁在抽屉里，一星期过去，他连看也不看。在一周的末尾他设法看看他是不是能清楚地记得这七部稿子的内容和质量。三部他记得清楚，其余的四部他不能马上记起来。经过更多一番努力，他又记起两部。但有两部他完全忘掉了；在二读之后给他的脑海里没有留下印象的作品不可能有真正的价值；这是它们致命的缺陷；于是他从抽屉里拿出稿子，排除两部 他记不起来的两部 在读 重读其余的五部。第三遍时，样样东西都受到判定， 题材，技巧，思想，文学性质；三项是第一流的，两项则被出版人认为是第二流。事情就如此结束。 在所有大出版社事情大抵都像这样进行；可是如今不幸并非一切文学作品都受到同样严格的评定。更确切地说它受到公众好恶的评定；公众并不喜欢最优秀的东西。可是有把握说像剑桥大学或牛津大学那样的出版社，对稿件的评审确实是很严格的。在它们那里原稿一次就给审读彻底，而不大可能重新审读。我们谈到的这名职业编审以他的全部修养，学识和经验，审稿时跟一个孩子读童话没有两样，他迫使他的心灵细致地发挥跟孩子的心灵同样的全部力量，从各方面对作品进行考虑，从它的所有方面，上百种不同的角度。说儿童是水平低劣的读者，这不确；不良的阅读习惯只是在后来养成的，永远不是天生的。自然的和学者式的阅读方式是儿童的方式，但它需要我们成人容易丢掉的东西，即非常宝贵的耐心；缺乏耐心，什么事情都做不好，阅读也不例外。 细心的阅读既然重要，你们就容易理解不能浪费时间精力。受过良好训练和高水平教育的心智力可不能浪费在任何平凡的书籍上。所谓平凡的书籍我指的是价值不高的和无益的文学作品。没有什么比训练自我选择合适的书读的能力更重要了，也没有什么受到这样普遍的忽视。指责一个有才能的人竟然会浪费时间去找什么是可读的书是一种谬见。他可以很容易正确地了解到在各种文学体裁中最优秀的作品的书目，而坚持阅读这些最优秀的作品。当然，如果他一定要成为专家，文学批评家，职业编审，他就要既读好书也读不好的书。如果他想从这种折磨中脱身，那就只能借助由经验锻炼出来的快速阅读判断的能力。比如，设想一下像圣斯伯里教授这样的批评家，他必须完成一定的阅读量，而且要做得彻底。不考虑他在大学所受的训练，首先他精通希腊、拉丁文经典著作，这就不简单，此外他准读过几个世纪的约五千部英语作品 只要可能，熟悉其中的一切，每本书的来历，作者的生平。他也一定要彻底掌握所有有关这一大块文学作品的社会政治的历史背景。但这仍然还不到他工作的一半。因为作为一位两种文 ，他对法文的研究，包括古法语和现代法语， 学的权利准比他对英语的研究还广泛。必须像一位大师那样去读他的著作。从头到尾整个都谈不上什么消遣。唯一的乐趣就是成绩，阅读他的作品取得的成绩是非常了不起的。世界上的事难莫难于读一本书然后刚好用几句话清楚而真实地指出这本书的文学价值。全世界超不出二十个人能做这个工作，因为从事这个工作需要经验和巨大的能力。我们当中，即使穷毕生的精力学习，也很难望成为一流批评家。可是我们全都可以学会阅读，这绝不是一桩小事。伟大的批评家通过他们的判断力可以对我们显示达到这个目的的途径。 可是归根结蒂，最了不起的批评家就是公 并不 众是一天的公众，也不是一代人，而是好几个世纪的公众。换句话说，对一本接受时间令人生畏的考验的书，最伟大的批评家是全民族对这本书的一致意见，以至全世界的人对这本书的一致意见。书的声誉不是由批评家决定，而是由数百年积累起来的全世界的人的意见决定的，而这个世人的公意并不如受过训练的批评家的意见那么轮廓分明。它不能阐释；它是模糊的，像一种我们无法确切描写其性质的巨大的感情；它是从感觉出发而非从理智出发；它仅仅说：“我喜欢它。”可是没有什么评定像这种评定那么稳妥，因为那是一种亿万人的经验的成果。对一本好书的考验应该永远是经受了好几代人的意见的考验。这非常简单。 考验一部伟大的作品是看我们读它一次就不再想读了或还想不止一次地再读。任何真正伟大的作品是在我们读过一次之后还想再读，甚至再三地读；每再读一次我们都发现其中的新意和优点。一本书，若一个受过教育并且趣味高尚的人不想再读，多半并没有多大价值。先前不久关于法国大小说家左拉①的艺术有过一阵不错的讨论。有人说他具备绝对的天才，有人说他只有非常卓越的才华。这场辩论引出某些奇谈怪论，可是一位批评家突如其来地提出这问题：“你们当中有多少人读过或想读一部左拉的小说一遍以上呢？”没有人答复，事实胜于雄辩。大约没有人读过一部左拉的小说一遍以上。这就从正面证明左拉的小说中缺乏了不起的超绝的才华，也没有掌握表现最高尚的感情的艺术形式。任何一本书，尽管被十万个读者买去，如果绝对没有被他们读过一遍以上，那它准是既浮浅又虚假。可是我们不能认为单独一个人的判断是一贯正确的。肯定一本书的价值伟大一定得集中许多人的意见。因为即便是最优秀的批评家也容易有某些迟钝之处，某些失误。卡莱尔，比方说，就不能容忍勃朗宁，拜伦不能容忍某些最伟大的英国诗人。一个人必须有多方面的学识才能对许多书作出可靠的评价。有时我们可以怀疑某一个批评家的判断，但是对几代人的评断那是不可能怀疑的。即使我们不能马上看出一本几百年来受到赞美与爱好的书有什么优点，我们也可以确信，通过试试仔细地阅读，最后也会感觉这种爱好与赞扬是有道理的。对穷人的最好的图书馆是完全只收藏这样最伟大的经受了时间考验的作品的图书馆。那么这就是我们在选择读物方面最重要的指南。我们应当只读那些我们想一读再读的书，我们也不应当购买这些以外的书，除非我们有用来投资的特殊缘故。第二个要求注意的事实是在所有这些伟大的作品中都具有潜在的价值这一普遍的特点，它们万世不朽，它们永葆青春。一部伟大的作品不容易在一读时为年轻人所理解，他对它的认识仅停留在表面。他吸收和欣赏的是一个表面的故事。任何一个年轻人在一读时不可能看出一部伟大作品的质量。要记住在许多情况下人们需要花好几百年才能发现在这么一本书里面的一切，但是作品本身能根据一个人的人生经验向他揭示新的意义。一本使我们在十八岁时感到乐趣的书，如果它是一本好书，那么它在我们三十岁时证明依然是一本新书。四十岁时我们会重读它，而且纳闷为什么以前没有看出它有那么美呢？在五十或六十岁时同样的事实会重演。对一部伟大的作品的理解是跟心智成正比地同时发展的。正是已故的一代又一代人所发现的这个不寻常的真理使我们认识到莎士比亚、但丁或歌德的作品的伟大意义。也许在这个问题上歌德能给我们一个最好的例子。他写了大量的散文短篇故事，这些小故事为儿童所爱读，因为对儿童来说，它们具备童话的一切魅力。但他绝不是当作童话来写的；他为有人生经验的人而写。年轻人在读这些故事时发现它们是非常严肃的。中年人在它们短小的篇幅中发现不寻常的深度；老年人在其中找到全部的人生哲理，生活的全部智慧。如果一个人头脑很迟钝，他也许看不到里面的好多东西，但是相比之下，如果他是一个头脑优越的人，对人生的知识又非常广博，他就会发现构思这些故事的人的了不起的伟大。 这并不是说这些作品的作者能事先构想好他们将放进他们的作品中的思想和艺术的全部广度和深度。伟大的艺术杰作无意识地发挥作用，从来不怀疑它们是伟大的；一位作家的天资愈高，那他认识自己有才华的机会就愈小；因为他的才华就愈加不大可能被公众所发现，这要到他死后很久才成为现实。伟大的文学作品是被那些不认为自己伟大的人写出来的。好几千年以前，阿拉伯的某个流浪者在夜晚观望星空，思考人和创造世界的神之间的关系，把他心里想的用诗表达，这些诗就在《约伯书》 内保存下来直到今天。对这个人来说，天空是一个固体的穹隆，对天外可能存在的东西他从未想过。自他那时以后我们的天文学知识扩大了多少啊！如今我们知道有三千万个太阳，它们大约都有行星追随，在我们的天文器械视野之内呈现 出总数约三亿个我们的太阳系以外的世界。可能其中有一大批上面是存在有智力的生命的。甚至再过若干年我们将可能取得肯定的证据在火星上存在比我们的文明更为古老的文明。我们对宇宙的观念跟约伯对宇宙的观念相差何其大。可是这个头脑简单的希伯莱人的诗并没有因这种差距而丧失一毫它的美和价值。完全相反！随着天文学上的每个新发现，约伯的话对我们具有了更崇高的内涵，其所以如此，就因为他是个真正的大诗人，说出了几千年前藏在他内心的实话。同样很古的时候希腊有一位讲故事的人，他写了一篇关于一个乡村少年和一个少女的小故事，名为《达夫尼斯与克露》 。这个故事很短小，用尽可能最简朴的语言叙述这一双少男少女是如何彼此钟情，又不知道是什么缘故，以及他们互相说的一切天真烂漫的事情，故事的两个主人公达夫尼斯与克露从婴儿时期起分别为牧人拉蒙与德利亚斯收养，长大后他们帮助义父牧羊并因相爱结合，后来找到了他们生身的父母，以皆大欢喜结束。人又如何善意地讪笑他们，告诉他们某些最简单的生活规律。有人也许会想，什么微不足道的题材！但这个已译成世界各国语言的故事，我们读起来依然新鲜；我们重读时它显得更美，因为它告诉我们青少年天真烂漫的感情上的某些真实和温馨可爱的东西。它决不会陈旧过时，它所描写的男女主人公也是永远年轻不老的。让我们拿近代来看看，大约三百年前一位法国教士构想了一个年轻的学生被一个放荡的女人所迷惑的故事，他被这个女人引诱陷进了许多可耻而使他痛苦的境地。这本小书叫作《曼侬莱斯考》，为我们描写了过去的社会，一个人们身佩宝剑、头发扑粉的时代，那时候一切都可能跟今天的生活不同。但这个故事好像发生在今天一样地真实，也像发生在人类任何的文明时代一样地真实；主人公的悲欢感染我们，仿佛是我们自己的一样。这个女人并不真坏，不过软弱而自私，使读者入迷如同成为她的牺牲品的男主人公入迷一样，直到悲剧结束。《曼侬》又是世界文学不朽的作品之一。再从可能是一百部书里面举一个例子，想一想安徒生的童话吧。安徒生有一个想法，就是道德的真理和社会生活的哲理也能通过短小的童话和儿童故事教给孩子们，几乎比其他方式更好。他借助数以百计的旧故事，把它们重写，这一套焕然一新的奇妙的故事已成为每个图书馆的藏书的一部分，在所有的国家里，读它们的成人比儿童还多得多。在这套令人惊异的童话中，有一个关于人鱼的故事 ，即《海的女儿》。大家都读过。当然不可能存在人鱼这种东西，从某一种观点看这个故事是荒诞不经的。但是故事所表现的无私，爱情，忠实，这类感情却是万古常青的，这个故事是这么美，所以我们就忘记了情节上的一切非真实性；我们只看到童话后面永恒的真理。 现在你们会理解我所指的好书的确切含义了。那么如何选择呢？若干年前， 鲁博克 你们曾记得有一个叫约翰爵士的英国科学家，他开列了一张他称之为世界上最好的或者 书的名单 说至少是一百本最好的书吧。于是有的出版家就印行了这一百本书的廉价版。照着约翰爵士的例子，别的文人也开出他们自己认为的现存一百本最好的书的单子。如今相当充分的时间过去了，对我们显示了这类实验的价值。除开对出版商，它们原来毫无价值。很多人也许购买这一百本书；不过很少人去读 这不是因为鲁博克爵士的想法不好，这是因为没有一个人能为一大批智力不同的人规定一道死板的阅读程序。鲁博克爵士仅仅表达他个人的意见，哪些书最吸引他；另一个文人公开出另一个不同的书单；大约没有两个人会开出完全相同的书单来。 无论如何，好书的选择是个人的事情。总之，你必须按你内心的要求去选择。博学多才的人是极少的，他们才会有兴趣地注意文学各个门类的好书。一般情况下一个人把自己的兴趣限定 也就是最适合 在一小批题材范围内更好他的天资，爱好，最使他喜欢的题材。既不完全知道我们个人的性格和脾气，又对此格格不入，而且也不知道我们的能力的人是无法替我们作出决定的。但有一件很容易做也就是首先决定什么文学题 到 材已使你得到愉快，其次决定就这一题材已成书的作品中哪些是最好的，然后读这些最好的而排除那些虽则采用同样的题材但昙花一现，卑不足道，没有得到大批评家或大量公众意见肯定的作品。那些得到上述两方面肯定的书的数量不是像你们可能认为的那么多。每种伟大的文明不过产生两三部第一流的作品，假如把希腊文明看作例外。体现所有伟大的宗教教训的经书，即使作为文学作品看，必然是第一流的，因为它们经过一再润色，使得用以写作它们的语言达到文学上至善尽美的地步。那些表现民族理想的伟大的史诗也应获得第一流的地位。第三，反映生活的戏剧杰作也必须认为属于最高层次的文学。那么代表这类书的有多少种呢？不很多，最优秀的，像钻石一样，绝不会是大量的。 ① 左拉：法国小说家，《卢贡 马加尔家族》系列小说的作者。

An Interview With Kenneth Koch by David Kennedy Recorded in Huddersfield, England, Thursday 5th August 1993 [Interviewer's Note: The following interview was recorded late on a hot August afternoon in the lounge-cum-bar of a commercial traveller's hotel in Huddersfield. As a result both interviewer and subject had to compete with early evening drinkers chilling out at the end of the working day and with the television news and sports reports. Kenneth Koch was unfailingly helpful and courteous throughout despite being clearly exhausted after along car journey from Ipswich where he had opened the exhibition 'Kenneth Koch: Collaborations with Artists' curated by latter-day New York poet Paul Violi. Kenneth Koch was also in England to promote his book of short stories Hotel Lambosa (Coffee House Press). The interview was recorded and transcribed by David Kennedy and then corrected and edited by Kenneth Koch.] David Kennedy: I wanted to start by asking you to tell me something about your background - do you come from a literary or artistic family? Kenneth Koch: Well, I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My family was not nationally known as being a literary family, though my mother and my mother's side of the family in general were interested in literature. My mother actually gave talks about books ever y now and then but...And one of my great uncles wrote a novel or two but I don't know of any very literary members of the family... David Kennedy: Was literature a very early interest of yours or something you came to later? Kenneth Koch: There was a form of literature that I was interested in immediately, nursery rhymes and children's stories. The first poem I remember writing was when I was five years old. I don't know if I wrote it down - I don't know if I was able to writ e then but I was five years old so perhaps I was able to write it out a little bit. It was a poem about something that was not true. I don't know where I got the idea for it. It rhymed and everything. As I remember it was: I have a little pony / I ride hi m up and down. / I ride him in the country / I ride him in the town. I didn't have a pony, I didn't want a pony really so it must have come, been inspired by some poems I'd read. And I showed it to my mother and she threw her arms around me and kissed me and said "O, that's wonderful!" I suppose this was a positive experience but actually...And then I was sort of a class poet when I was a little boy in school and when there was a holiday I would sometimes be asked to write a poem. I remember that my uncle Leo and my grandfather both encouraged me in writing. My poetry changed when I was fifteen years old. One of my uncles, Leo, had written poetry when he was a young man and he took me down to the family business and he opened a safe and showed me some poems he'd written when he was nineteen and he also gave me a book of the collected poems of Shelley. And I still have that book and I remembered always this picture of Shelley at the front of the book with an open collar and wild hair and a wild look in his eye. I read those poems as well as I was able and started writing poems that I thought were Shelley-like. In fact, they merely had some of the lofty attitude and some of the nineteenth century language - they weren't really [Laughing] very much like Shelley. And, er, I discovered modern poetry I think quite late, when I was seventeen, through an anthology, a Louis Untermeyer anthology. Of course, I was crazy about modern poetry as soon as I discovered it. Then I had a very sympathetic, intelligent teacher when I was a junior in high school - I don't know what the equivalent is here [UK] but I was seventeen years old - who encouraged me, who liked the poems I was writing influenced by modern poetry. I was also at that time when I w as sixteen or seventeen, I was reading a trilogy by John Dos Passos, U.S.A. It was a very famous book at the time. I was particularly inspired by the stream-of-consciousness sections. I was...I didn't know that he'd gotten this technique from Joyce and I suppose when one's a young writer it doesn't matter if one knows those things. I was excited by just saying anything that came into my head without thinking about it. And I wrote some rather shocking, crazy things but I found a kind of music that I liked that sounded more like my own voice than the rather stilted sonnets I'd written in my Shelley period. And my high school teacher, whose name was Katherine Lappa, encouraged me to write free, crazy things and that's the story of my early poetry. David Kennedy: Do you remember when you first wrote a poem when you thought 'That's it! I've really got something, I've made something that's really my own'? Did that happen fairly early or much later? Kenneth Koch: I think I started writing poems I liked more when I was seventeen or eighteen. I wrote poem when I was just eighteen, maybe on my birthday, called 'For My Eighteenth Birthday' or 'Poem For My Birthday' and it was influenced by French surreal ism in so far as I understood it. I understood it mainly from a surrealist magazine called View. It was edited by Charles Henry Ford and Andre Breton had something to do with it too. Some of the French surrealists at the beginning of the war had come over to New York and they brought out this magazine. It was a big, glossy magazine full of surrealist things and I wrote this poem when I was eighteen beginning, I can only remember part of, "At eighteen I walk on the surface of things, I tread in my stocking feet in houses of soft love..." [Laughs] and other sort of surrealist lines. So I liked that poem and I liked a poem I wrote I think when I was seventeen called 'Schoolyard in April'. That one was actually published in Poetry magazine in Chicago. And the n when I was eighteen years old I had to go in the Army - it was World War Two - and I didn't write very much at first but when I was actually in combat in the Philippines I managed to write a few poems. Again I wrote a birthday poem I remember which was also published in Poetry magazine, it was 'Poem For My Twentieth Birthday', and I wrote some other poems. It was reassuring to be able to write poems while I was in this terrible war. David Kennedy: Like a reminder of home, perhaps? Kenneth Koch: Well, it was an escape from where I was, in any case. [Laughing] David Kennedy: Changing direction, you've written in a wide variety of styles - is there an essential Kenneth Koch? Kenneth Koch: For whom would there be this Kenneth Koch? David Kennedy: For you and for the reader. Kenneth Koch: Well, I certainly have the feeling that I'm the same person even though I've changed a great deal. I can't speak for the reader. Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur. As I look over my work, I mean every time I look over my early work, I see yes I could do that then and then I could do that and that...That may be the hardest thing for a writer, at least for a poet, to tell what the identity of his work is. It's very hard to know what one really looks like or how one moves because one poses in front of the mirror and, erm,...I mean, it's really a question for you and others to answer if there's an essential Kenneth Koch. Of course I think there is... David Kennedy: I was interested to know what you thought because certainly critics over here [in the UK] have just said "Kenneth Koch the comic poet" and that's really as far as it's gone. Kenneth Koch: I've had trouble with criticism, I guess. It's hard to know what role criticism plays in either encouraging poets or in getting other people to read them. David Kennedy: Have you ever found it helpful yourself? Kenneth Koch: Well, it's enormously cheering to get a good review by someone who seems to understand your work. I remember being enormously cheered when a friend would say something intelligent about my work. I'm trying to think if there's any written cri ticism that has made a difference to the way I wrote but I don't think so. Some people who write about poetry seem to have had trouble with my poetry because it is sometimes comic. I don't think the nature of my poetry is satirical or even ironic, I think it's essentially lyrical but again I don't know if it's my position to say what my poetry is like. The comic element is just something that it seems to me enables me to be lyrical in the same way - not to compare myself qualitatively to these great write rs - but in the same way that it enables Byron to write his best poetry and certainly Aristophanes and certain others too. Ariosto is very very funny... David Kennedy: Changing direction again, the so-called New York School has been enormously influential on recent generations of young British poets and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about that. Looking back at the Fifties, how much do you thin k that the poetry that you and Ashbery and O'Hara and Schuyler wrote then was a reaction against the climate of the Cold War? Kenneth Koch: If it was a reaction, I didn't know it at the time. I think we all influenced each other and we were also influenced by certain other poets. I think the influences on us were not mainly political or of the decade or of the political situatio n but of other writers. I think there was a kind of originality about what we wrote. We didn't seem to have any sort of poetic father figures. There was no-one whom we worshipped and said 'yes, he is our leader'...[Pause] I can only speak for myself. Actually, in that catalogue I gave you [Kenneth Koch: Collaborations with Artists] there's a poem which has not been in a book yet called 'Time Zone' which is all about - it's about a ten page poem - all about my friendships and collaborations and excitements with other poets and painters in the Fifties and early Sixties. As I recollect, our political involvement, certainly mine, I would say it was mainly indifference. I became involved in politics really in 1968. I was a professor at Columbia when the students rebelled about the Vietnam War when they took over some university buildings and one had to take sides either with the students or with the administration. I took sides with the students. And after that I marched in parades and even went to jail briefly for one night in the cause of peace in Vietnam. But I was...and I wrote a rather long poem called 'The Pleasures of Peace' though truly it seems to me that - I don't know whether this is just true for me - but I certainly think it's worth making an effort to write about certain important things as I made an effort to write about the war. I wrote hundred of pages of that poem but all the parts that were directly about the war didn't seem to me good enough as art and it ended up being a poem which rather than about the war was about the peace the peace movement and the pleasure, excitement and joy of being with many other people who were in favour of peace and so on. David Kennedy: And, of course, there's the line where you say "To my contemporaries I'll leave the horrors of war"... Kenneth Koch: Well, it's not that I was indifferent ot the horrors of war because that's what inspired the poem to a large extent but I couldn't write about them. Also, some of my contemporaries, it seemed to me, were perhaps profiting in that rather path etic way that poets profit from things because we practice an art in which there's no money [Laughing] by pretending to, I don't know, pretending to care more about certain things than they were able to write about effectively. I mean, I don't know what o ther people were feeling, I just know what I was able to write about. I don't know if you read my poem 'Seasons on Earth' which is the last one in the Selected Poems and which is a poem about looking back on having written 'Ko' and 'The Duplications', two long poems I wrote. And [Leafs through book] I talk about the Fifties here, about when I was living with my wife in Little Villino in Florence when we were first married in the early Fifties and I say It was the time, it was the nineteen fifties, When Eisenhower was President, I think, And the Cold war, like Samson Agonistes, Went roughly on, and we were at the brink. No time for Whitsuntides or Corpus Christis - Dread drafted all with its atomic clink. The Waste Land gave the time's most accurate data, It seemed, and Eliot was the Great Dictator Of literature. One hardly dared to wink Or fool around in any way in poems, And critics poured out awful jereboams To irony, ambiguity, and tension - And other things I do not wish to mention. All this fell sideways past our Florence windows - That it, it had not much attention paid to it. Dry, stultifying words, they were horrendous, Inspiring in the breast a jolly hatred - And then new lines arose, like snakes to Hindus, That for depressed spelled out exhilarated. I think that what I say there is that I simply was ignoring the fact that The Waste Land indeed made it seem to many poets that one had to be depressed - not that The Waste Land is a bad poem, it's a wonderful poem - that one had to feel despair, that one had to think that the modern world was terrible. I was quite happy there in Florence in the Fifties when I wrote my poem 'Ko' and it wasn't consciously a reaction against the time. It came from having read Don Juan about three years beforehand and having conceived the idea that someday I wanted to write a poem like that. I suppose it was partly a reaction against what seemed to me the deadness and narrowness, the stultifying narrowness of the poetry that was being published in all the quarterlies which I wrote about in a poem called 'Fresh Air'. It seemed to me that life was, I mean here I was in my twenties and life seemed to me so exciting and full of girls and gardens and steamships and drinks and tennis games and countries and cathedrals...I mean, it seemed absurd to be writing these drabs, depressed little poems. I knew there were things like death and poverty and injustice but they weren't everything... [Pause] David Kennedy: In your poem 'Some General Instructions' you say "The days of irony are here, irony and deception. But do not harden your heart." It seems to me that could be read as a political statement. Kenneth Koch: That instructional poem like my other instructional poems 'The Art of Poetry' and 'The Art of Love' is...it contains things that I think are true. It's also somewhat comic and somewhat ironic. Obviously, it would be a very pompous and pretentious thing to say "the days of irony are here, irony and deception" and say it in such a way that the reader was obliged to sit there and say "o yes" like "the time of the tiger is upon us". It doesn't seem appropriate to me to write in a way that bullie s the reader in that way. Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world and it seemed true at the time I wrote the poem there was a good deal of deception also. I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising there's obviously a lot of deception. But I'm urging the reader in a somewhat over-simple way that despite the fact that he lives in such a time not to be hardened and spoiled by it. You're looking for political statements in my work...Well, it seem s to me when I look in or wherever I look when I write that politics is there the way men and women are there, the way the Atlantic Ocean is there. Sometimes I've written about politics specifically, I mean about politics as it's understood on television and in newspapers, as in 'The Pleasures of Peace'...I think political views can be deduced if one wishes to deduce from a statement such as the one you've just quoted in my poem or a religious view could be deduced from it or an aesthetic view but...But I don't think I just look at the desk and the dictionary. As for political poetry, as it's usually defined, it seems there's very little good political poetry. It seems to require the conjunction of the, maybe the twenties or thirties of a genius and some great cataclysmic political event; for example, like the conjunction of the Russian Revolution and the 22nd year of Vladimir Mayakovsky so that he could write 'A Cloud in Trousers'. But good political poetry's very rare and it seems to me very hard to wri te because if you write...essentially if you write a political poem that would be useful to any political group, you're using other people's ideas, you're using ideas that already exist and who wants to do that? I mean, as charming as old people are, one doesn't want to have a 75-year-old baby. One wants to make something new. So if you make something new, I mean a really good poem, a good political poem, a great political poem like Yeats's 'Easter 1916', I don't think any party would want to use that poe m because he says "maybe they were all crazy, maybe it was useless". Or is it in 'September 1913' he says it? I think in both he suggests...in both of those poems Yeats obviously comes out strongly on one side but he says "you know, it might have been the wrong thing to do, they might have been crazy". And no political party would want that. [Pause] David Kennedy: Let's change tack again. Could you say a little about non-literary influences on your work? Kenneth Koch: O Lord, that's hard. That's very hard. That's like, erm, a bit like asking I think - I may be exaggerating - like I play tennis lot - like asking for non-tennis influences on my tennis game. Have I been influenced by a footballer or a baseba ll player...probably not! I love painting and music, of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it and I didn't read it until I was in my late twenties and that was one of the main inspirations for my long poem 'When The Sun Tries To Go On' which does not resemble War and Peace in any way except in the fact that I tried to put everything into it, which seemed to me one thing I found ins piring about Tolstoy. Let's see...I feel close to certain painters. I've always been friends, that is since I went to New York when I was about twenty three or so, I've been friends with painters, especially Larry Rivers and Jane Freilicher and I've done a lot of collaborations...I suppose that...it's really hard to tell...I mean, certainly the brightness, the dash, the excitement, the sort of self-confidence of the hand on the canvas - all that was exciting. It's hard to say how it influenced my poetry. I would say that the certain ambience that John [Ashbery] and Frank [O'Hara] and I were in - Jimmy [Schuyler] came along a bit later - with seeing each other all the time and being envious of each other or emulous of each other and inspiring each other an d collaborating on poems which we did a good deal. David Kennedy: It's the same sort of thing, isn't it, that you talk about in 'Fate' where you're remembering particular occasions and you can't quite remember who was there or where it was but it's the feeling you're remembering... Kenneth Koch: Yeah, but that wasn't about artistic collaboration though - this is more about the excitement of it all, doing what seemed to us the new work. The painters sort of created...John, Frank and I were about the only poets in this bunch...there w as Barbara Guest at certain times and Jimmy [Schuyler] came a bit later...all the other poets seemed to us - we didn't know everybody, we didn't know what was going on out on the West Coast at the time - most of the other poets seemed sort of like neat little fellows who were writing academic poems as I say in 'Fresh Air', poets with their eyes on "the myth, the missus and the mid-terms". Writing about the failure of their marriage and their promotions at the university...quatrains. Well, I like quatrains but I didn't like their poems. The painters gave us a sort of ambience. They were nice, lively guys who got exercise in the daytime, painted in big light studios and they felt good at night and they would sometimes actually sell paintings. They gave parties and it was as much a social thing as anything. It's really hard to talk, I find, about influence from one art to another - at least, I find it hard. But I was certainly encouraged by the example of, from rather early on, the example of Picasso and Max Ernst and other painters who had the courage to do something stunning, strong, starkly dramatic and beautiful that didn't necessarily make any sense. All that certainly went in my head and my heart but how that comes out on the page is hard to tell. And also I liked John Cage's music. I liked it for its craziness, the use of silence, the boldness - anything to get me away from writing about...I don't know what academic poets write about. I talk about it in 'Fresh Air', whatever they were writing about... I mean, there are excesses all over the place. People are always saying what are the different schools of American poetry. Maybe there are three or four really good poets in a generation. I took a course at Harvard with Delmore Schwartz, a writing course, and there were about thirty of us and he said "How many of you expect to be great writers?" and we all raised our hands. And he said "You do know that in age in which there are more than three or four great writers is known as a renaissance?" [Laughing] I think if taking all these positions like Formalism or L=A-N=G=U=A=G=E poetry or whatever, if it helps somebody, one of these rare beings who's a really good poet - I wouldn't say there are only three or four in a generation, that's be rather strict - bu t if it helps someone to write good poetry that's fine. I don't really see vast movements full of wonderful poets all over the place. David Kennedy: John Ashbery has said that he feels the American scene is very regional in that you go to one part of America and everyone thinks X, Y and Z are the poets and then you go somewhere else and nobody's ever heard of them and they all think A, B and C are the poets. Kenneth Koch: O, I guess some of that is true. I think John's been travelling a bit more than I have in America lately. I don't know. Sure to some extent that's true, like in the South certain poets are more than they are elsewhere and in the West. David Kennedy: If we look at how you're perceived, certainly from an English perspective you are always seen as a New York School poet. Do you see yourself in that way or as just another American poet? Kenneth Koch: O, I don't think of myself in either way really. In the early Fifties and all through the Fifties, I felt very close to the work, particularly, of John and Frank and I think our work had certain things in common which it had less in common after that, when we either, like we began to be published, I got married, other people went off. We had sort of another public - we were our entire readership for many years and we were very excited by each other - at least I was excited by what they were doing, I can't speak for them. And I was excited by what my painter friends were doing and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too and that was a wonderful little, fizzy sort of world and even at that time I never thought of myself as a New York po et or as an American poet. The term 'New York School' was, I guess it was invented by John Bernard Myers to describe the painters, on the model of the French, and Donald Allen used 'New York School of poetry' in his anthology The New American Poetry 1945- 1960 and he included under the rubric of the New York School some poets who don't really have much to do with the work of John and Frank and Jimmy and me. I could tell you what I think some of the characteristics of our work were in the Fifties that may h ave distinguished us from other poets. I think we were all influenced or rather we were certainly conscious of and aware of French poetry, sort of the avantgarden tradition from Gerard de Nerval up to World War Two. We knew about Mayakovsky and Pasternal and we read Rilke and Lorca and we had all read William Carlos Williams pretty hard and Wallace Stevens and I'm probably doubtless leaving some things out. We were, it seems to me - and I'm hesitant to speak for other people - but if I look back at the po ems of that time, we seemed to be particularly interested in the surface of the language and the excitement that was going on there rather than thinking and finding the precise word for it, rather to let the words find the subject or partly define the sub ject for us. John would certainly say this in a different way and so would Jimmy and Frank if they were here to say it which I wish they were. There was a certain amount of humour in all our work...Maybe you can almost characterise the poetry of the New York School as having as one of its main subjects the fullness and richness of life and the richness of possibility and excitement and happiness. I find that a lot in Frank's work, especially the early work. Whether I understood what was going on in 'Second Avenue' or not when I first read it, I felt 'My God! I'd have to have three bodies to live this much!' It's wonderful. It seems everything is so full of possibilities one can hardly take it all in. When I wrote a review of Frank's Collected Poems I call ed it 'More Than The Mind Can Hold' - I sort of stole a line of his, "more than the eye can hold", which is describing a de Kooning painting he had in his apartment which he said is better than music. But it seems to me that his poetry is so rich you can' t, it moves so quickly you can't keep it in your mind all at once. I think he's a great poet, Frank. To get back to the New York School, another thing was we all went to the ballet a lot when George Balanchine was with the New York City Ballet. We would g o two or three times a week some weeks, not all weeks, and we also liked opera. Frank and John particularly knew a great deal about music. The kind of poetry I didn't like, which I guess I didn't like because it didn't move me, it didn't seem exciting but also after a while because it was the kind of poetry that was hogging up all the space in the magazines and books and fellowships and which we weren't getting, was this kind of, it seemed to me, very narrow poetry. Sort of old-fashioned, rhymed usually t hen but about a very narrow range of subject matter, not letting enough in. [Pause] David Kennedy: Do you have an ideal reader in mind when you're writing? Kenneth Koch: I wonder if I ever thought of an ideal reader...I guess when I was in my twenties and in New York and maybe even in my early thirties, I would write for my wife Janice, for Frank, John, Jimmy, maybe even for Jane Freilicher and Larry Rivers; mainly for my poet friends and my wife who was very smart about poetry. It seems to me after a while that these people that I would have in mind a little bit when I wrote - it's not exactly as though I was writing for them but they would be in my mind - that I sort of absorbed what I knew or imagined their response to be so that it's been a long time since I've with any regularity thought of any of them while I was writing. Sometimes I write a line that may echo a line of John's and think "O! There's Joh n!" or Frank, you know. So I think I've sort of absorbed my audience in the sense that when I write it pleases me. I mean, I'm sure these people are there but I'm not aware of them. David Kennedy: Would you describe yourself as a surrealist? Kenneth Koch: I was influenced by surrealist poetry and painting as were thousands of other people and it seems to me to have become a part of the way I write but it's not...As I understand the surrealist program, it was programmatically in favour of the unconscious as opposed to the conscious; programmatically in favour of chance, even programmatically in favour of a certain kind of violence and all that dream stuff. All that is interesting to me and it's become an automatic part of what I do but I would never say I was a surrealist. People used to say rather carelessly when they didn't know what to say about what John and Frank and I wrote, they'd say a couple of things: that we were surrealists and that we were influenced by painters. [Laughing] And since a number of critics of Frank have mentioned surrealism, I went to some pains to point out in the review I wrote of his Collected Poems that he wasn't at all a surrealist. If you take a poem like 'Sleeping On The Wing', he very clearly talks about getting into a dream state, being free of everything, that's wonderful, but he says "the memory of a beloved face in trouble", somebody you love, draws you back to reality and that's what he does in his poetry. He's a poet who has all the richness that the surrealists found but he uses it for different ends...He doesn't really allow himself to stay transported where the surrealists really hope to find, it seems to me, an elsewhere... David Kennedy: Can you talk a little about your latest book, Hotel Lambosa? Kenneth Koch: This is a book of very short stories.I've written fiction before. I wrote a novel called The Red Robins but that's rather - not poetic prose in the ordinary sense - but a rather extravagant kind of writing but Hotel Lambosa is a book of more or less realistic short stories. I had tried to write stories, almost true stories before, but I never had found a way to do it and I think that what sort enabled me to write this book was reading a wonderful book by Kawabata. Have you read him? I strongly recommend you read The Snow Country and also this wonderful book called Palm Of The Hand Stories which is in print in England. Palm Of The Hand Stories are a selection of very short stories from 1 to 5 pages that he wrote over the course of his life an d suddenly in these very short stories I saw a way that I could write fiction about my own experience and things that I've done and imagined. I was very interested to be writing these stories because I found that, like a certain kind of magnet, writing pr ose picked up details that my poetry had never been able to pick up because my poetry - and one can use an analogy with an automobile perhaps although I don't know if you use the same terms in Britain - tends to have a rather high idle; that is, once I st art writing about something it goes off rather fast [Laughing] and sometimes details which might be interesting such as what the room looked like or what somebody said that was not exactly on the same subject tend to get lost. Not always; sometimes I force myself to write precisely about those things but in any case I found that a lot of the parts of my experience I hadn't been able to write about before, I could write about in this book. I made an effort not to write prose poetry. I wanted to write real stories. I think it's possible sometimes people read them and say "O yes, they're prose poems" just because they're short. But they're not prose poems. The subject matter of the stories on the surface...there seem to be a number of stories about travel. Actually, when I was writing the book, I wrote many more stories than this, but one thing in here I worked on a lot has to do with what Yeats said about writing prose and poetry, that when you finish a poem it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut! These stories seem to click shut as much as my poems do but they did take a lot of time but then one gets used to that. What arrangement I had in the book was according to the countries t hey took place in and quite a few of them are about Italy and quite a few about France and I also have travelled in Africa so there are about seven or eight stories about Africa. I've also been to China so there are five or six stories about China and some about Mexico. I was a little surprised after I'd completed the book to see how many took place in other countries. It's a well known thing that ordinary perceptions can have a strange aspect when one is travelling. Waiting for a bus or walking in the street is slightly unlike what it is usually. So one sees things clearly...A number of the stories, though not by any means the majority, are about my late twenties and thirties, the early years of my marriage. [Pause] Some other prose writers I admire a gr eat deal and who certainly influenced my writing here are Leonard Sciascia, the Sicilian writer, who writes beautiful prose. I believe I was influenced by early Hemingway too, particularly the stories in In Our Time with those beautiful short sentences th at don't tell you too much and you have to read the fourth sentence to see what the third one means. Another prose writer who influenced me a lot...I'm thinking of Victor Shklovesky, who's mainly known as a formalist critic. He was a friend of Mayakovsky and Pasternak. I've read three or four of his prose books. One is called Not About Love which is a series of letters he wrote to a woman he loved who did not love and who said "You can write to me so long as you don't write about love." He wrote another book called The Third Factory and a wonderful book about Mayakovsky called Mayakovsky And His Circle. His sentences are always surprising. The way they're put together is exciting also. Also, I was influenced by the prose of Boris Pasternak though I had to read it in translation as indeed I had to read Shklovsky. I like particularly Pasternak's prose in his early stories. David Kennedy: Do you know his short novel The Last Summer? That's a beautiful book. Kenneth Koch: O yes, that's wonderful. I also admire very much the prose of the American writer James Salter. One of his books is called Light Years and there's a wonderful book about a love affair in France called A Sport And A Pastime and a book of short stories called Dusk. Actually, I think I read him mainly after I'd completed the stories. Writers I like include, in earlier generations, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens. There's an American poet named John Wheelwright I like very much. Of course, I like Byron enormously; I'm crazy about Don Juan. And of course Keats and Shelley and I suppose everyone that everyone likes. I think my poetry was very influenced - it seems almost dumb to say it - but it was very influenced by Shakespeare. Very early on I read his plays...and, I don't know, I started speaking in blank verse at a rather early age. [Laughing] But then, I'm a writer who likes to be influenced...Beyond that, my projects at the moment are I have a new book of poems [One Train], and I 'm going to do a new Selected too, either at the end of next year or after that. It takes a long time to publish a book... David Kennedy: There's so little of your work available in England... Kenneth Koch: I'd love for you to do something about it. I'd like my Selected Poems to come out in paperback. I'd like these stories to be published but I don't know quite how to go about it. There's not much money for anyone in this kind of writing. There's no way to make money as a poet. You can't own a poem. You can't dressed up and go to a poem. There'a nothing to do with it. [Laughing] David Kennedy: [Laughing] That's probably a good place to stop. Kenneth Koch, thank you very much. Original transcription and amendments (c) David Kennedy and Kenneth Koch, 1993. About David Kennedy I was born in Leicester, England in 1959 and read English and European Literature at the University of Warwick. I currently live in Sheffield where I work as a senior manager in manufacturing industry and study in the Graduate School a t Sheffield University where I am pursuing doctoral research on ideas of community in the poetry of Douglas Dunn, Tony Harrison and Seamus Heaney. I am a poet, editor and critic, and a regular reviewer for such journals as Poetry Review and P.N.Review. I am a co-editor of The New Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 1993), the bestselling anthology of contemporary British and Irish poetry which is used widely in schools and universities in the United Kingdom and Europe. My book of critical essays New Relations: The Refashioning of British Poetry 1980-1994 (Seren) was published in 1996 as was my first collection of poetry The Elephant's Typewriter (Scratch). My critical interests include postmodernism, masculinities and the locaton of value in late twentieth century culture. My own poetry seeks to combine postmodernism playfulness with native British realism and is heavily influenced by the New York School. I would love to hear from people with similar interests. I am particularly interested in working collaboratively, particularly with artists from other disciplines. You can write to me at 29 Vickers Road, Firth Park, Sheffield S5 6UY, England or you can fax me on (44) 114 2441202 or you can e-mail me at dgk-cvk@msn.com.

Introduction to Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems by Mark Ford from Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems, edited by Mark Ford "I love your poems in Poetry," James Schuyler wrote to Frank O'Hara after reading a batch that included "Radio" and "On Seeing Larry Rivers's Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Museum of Modern Art" in the March 1956 issue of the Chicago magazine. "In that cutting garden of salmon pink gladioli," he continued, "they're as fresh as a Norway spruce. Your passion always makes me feel like a cloud the wind detaches (at last) from a mountain so I can finally go sailing over all those valleys with their crazy farms and towns. I always start bouncing up and down in my chair when I read a poem of yours like 'Radio,' where you seem to say, 'I know you won't think this is much of a subject for a poem but I just can't help it: I feel like this,' so that in the end you seem to be the only one who knows what the subject for a poem is." Schuyler's elaborate metaphors, and his account of the way the poems have him physically "bouncing up and down" in his chair, suggest much about the unique and liberating nature of Frank O'Hara's poetry. Unlike the tasteful, carefully crafted "salmon pink gladioli" on offer elsewhere in the magazine, O'Hara's poems enable Schuyler to break free "(at last)" from the sterile security of terra firma and embark on a panoramic survey of life in all its surreal variety. But the sense of the sublime the poems make possible is achieved not by addressing themselves to particular subjects but by a passionate, unembarrassed responsiveness to whatever happens to happen, however incongruous or seemingly trivial. Like so many of O'Hara's readers, Schuyler finds himself galvanized by an injection of "immortal energy," to borrow a phrase from "Radio"—even though the poem's ostensible subject matter (Saturday-afternoon classical-radio schedules) may seem none too promising. What matters, and gets communicated, is the poet's self-reliant assertion: "I just can't help it: I feel like this." O'Hara disliked and distrusted theories of poetry but was in no way naive about his own procedures, which result, in his best work, in a style of writing that somehow manages to fuse immediacy and excitement with a glamorous hyper-sophistication and extreme self-consciousness. "I'd have," he tells us in "My Heart," the immediacy of a bad movie, not just a sleeper, but also the big, overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. When asked by Donald Allen for a statement to accompany his selection in the groundbreaking anthology The New American Poetry of 1960, O'Hara responded with a spoof manifesto entitled "Personism," in which he playfully ridiculed the very notion of writing according to some program or set of preconceived ideas: "You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.' " As for poetic form and other technical aspects of poetry, "that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you." His own personal breakthrough occurred, we learn, shortly after lunch with Leroi Jones on August 27, 1959, "a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born." Frank O'Hara: Selected PoemsWhile O'Hara's poems do often seem to unfurl with the randomness and intimacy of a telephone call (and how he would have adored cell phones!), they are also unobtrusively guarded, as he puts it in "Biotherm (for Bill Berkson)," "from mess and measure." From the outset of his career, O'Hara knew he wanted to develop a kind of poetry radically different from that being written and published by most English-language poets. In a talk given in 1952 at the Club—an artists' forum on East Eighth Street where painters, and occasionally poets, exchanged ideas and insults—O'Hara targeted especially those laboring under the "deadening and obscuring and precious effect" of T. S. Eliot. "And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets," "Personism" declares, "are better than the movies." Early O'Hara reveals the influence of Williams, certainly, but also O'Hara's immersion in numerous European (mainly French) poets and, in particular, the work of Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Lautréamont, Apollinaire ("I dress in oil cloth and read music / by Guillaume Apollinaire's clay candelabra"), René Char, André Breton, Pierre Reverdy, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Rilke, and Lorca. O'Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926, and grew up in Grafton, Massachusetts. His parents were both of Irish descent, and he attended Catholic schools. Initially, he intended a career in music, as a pianist or reviewer or composer. He was enrolled for a time in the New England Conservatory, but his studies there were interrupted by America's entry into World War II. O'Hara enlisted in late 1944 and served as a sonarman on the destroyer U.S.S. Nicholas in the South Pacific, and in operations off Japan itself. On his demobilization in 1946, he applied to Harvard and was accepted, again to study music; but after a freshman year of increasing disappointment with the music department, he switched his major to English and devoted himself to the writing of poems that he submitted to the scrutiny of his close friend Edward Gorey and the poet-on-campus, John Ciardi. A number were accepted for publication in The Harvard Advocate, one of whose editors was John Ashbery. The two met, however, only shortly before Ashbery graduated in the summer of 1949 and moved down to New York. While it is true that the poems O'Hara wrote as an undergraduate, and then as a master's student in creative writing at Ann Arbor in Michigan, are occasionally, as Ashbery has suggested, "marred by a certain nervous preciosity," they also reveal a poet deliberately experimenting with all manner of unfamiliar and iconoclastic idioms, in search of a distinctive and effective style of his own. The most successful seem to me those—like "Autobiographia Literaria," with which this selection opens, or "A Pleasant Thought from Whitehead" or "The Critic"—that deploy a faux-naif tone to celebrate O'Hara's triumphant sense of his own poethood: And here I am, the center of all beauty! writing these poems! Imagine! In the extraordinary "Memorial Day 1950," he offers a more extended and combative vision of his metamorphosis into a poet, one "tough and quick" enough to think with his "bare hands and even with blood all over / them." It's in this poem also that O'Hara begins the copious acknowledgment of inspirers and artistic heroes so characteristic of his work: It was Pablo Picasso who made him tough and quick (with a little help from "the world"), and further tributes are paid to Gertrude Stein, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, the Fathers of Dada, Auden, Rirnbaud, Pasternak, and Apollinaire. Frank O'Hara: Selected PoemsBut O'Hara's poems are full not only of the familiar names of the illustrious but of those of his numerous friends. (Of course, some of these, such as Willem de Kooning, were already famous, and others, like Larry Rivers or Jasper Johns, would become so.) One of O'Hara's earliest attempts to make poetry out of his social life was "A Party Full of Friends," first published in Poems Retrieved. It mentions many of those who crop up most often in O'Hara's poems—Violet (V.R. or Bunny Lang), Jane (Freilicher), Hal (Fondren), Larry (Rivers), John (Ashbery), and so on. The sassy exuberance of his early experiments in surrealism is here applied to commemorating a party that Ashbery hosted in his furnished room on West Twelfth Street while O'Hara was staying with him during a Christmas break from Ann Arbor in 1950. The poem initiates what one might call O'Hara's mythopoeic gossip mode: Violet leaped to the piano stool and knees drawn up under her chin commenced to spin faster and faster sing- ing "I'm a little Dutch boy Dutch boy Dutch boy" until the rain very nearly fell through the roof! Not since Alexander Pope has a poet so filled his work with the names and doings of his contemporaries, though while Pope expended his genius on presenting his enemies as dunces, O'Hara set about celebrating the exchange of inspiration and innovation, of art and love and rumor, among the painters, poets, novelists, dancers, filmmakers, composers, and musicians who made up his ever expanding circle and his first readership. "You are really," he wrote to Kenneth Koch in "Poem (The fluorescent tubing burns like a bobby-soxer's ankles)" the backbone of a tremendous poetry nervous system which keeps sending messages along the wireless luxuriance of distraught and hysterical desires so to keep things humming O'Hara had a similarly catalytic effect on his artist friends, and liked to keep things "humming" at a steady pitch of excitement. One of his most famous poems, "Why I Am Not a Painter," wittily explores the mysteries of the relationship between poetry and painting, in particular his and the painter Mike Goldberg's shared fascination with the possibilities of abstraction. "It was too much," Goldberg remarks of the SARDINES he has removed from his painting, while O'Hara's long poem about orange never actually gets around to mentioning the color: There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet. My poem is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES. O'Hara engaged in a series of intriguing collaborations with painters such as Larry Rivers, Norman Bluhm, Jasper Johns, and Joe Brainard, and as a reviewer for ARTNews and as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art did much to promote the work of the artists who meant most to him. "His presence and poetry," Koch recalled in an essay of 1964, "made things go on around him which could not have happened in the same way if he had not been there." Certainly the concluding lines of ''A Party Full of Friends" suggest he realized on this early visit to New York that he had found there his ideal milieu: Someone's going to stay until the cows come home. Or my name isn't Frank O'Hara Frank O'Hara: Selected PoemsThe Manhattan of O'Hara's poetry is a quasi-mythic city alive with nuance and possibility. "515 Madison Avenue / door to heaven?" ask the opening lines of "Rhapsody." At times the city assumes a distinct personality, as in "To the Mountains in New York," where it is figured as a brash, aging vamp, "noisy and getting fat and smudged / lids hood the sharp hard black eyes," but more often it serves as the site and inspirer of O'Hara's restless, fractured, shimmering fantasies, or as radiant backdrop to his intense friendships and brief or prolonged love affairs. In "Homosexuality," which is explicitly about cruising, he tallies up the merits of various latrines—"14th Street is drunken and credulous, / 53rd tries to tremble but is too at rest"—before poignantly voicing the secret thought of all who come to the city in quest of the good life: " 'It's a summer day, / and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world.' " The poems that won most plaudits in O'Hara's tragically shortened lifetime were those he called his "I do this I do that" poems, such as "A Step Away from Them," "The Day Lady Died," "Adieu to Norman, Bonjour to Joan and Jean-Paul," all set in the present tense of O'Hara's lunch hour: "It's my lunch hour. . . ," "It is 12:20 in New York a Friday. . . ," "It is 12:10 in New York and I am wondering. . ." These were collected in his immensely popular City Lights collection of 1964, Lunch Poems, for which O'Hara himself composed the jacket copy: Often this poet, strolling through the noisy splintered glare of a Manhattan noon, has paused at a sample Olivetti to type up thirty or forty lines of ruminations, or pondering more deeply has withdrawn to a darkened ware- or firehouse to limn his computed misunderstandings of the eternal questions of life, co-existence and depth, while never forgetting to eat Lunch his favorite meal. . . In fact, he normally typed up his midday ruminations upon return to his office in the Museum of Modern Art after his cheeseburger and glass of papaya juice, but the image here presented of a poet capable of writing any time, any place, was essentially a true one. James Schuyler, who shared an apartment with O'Hara in the mid-fifties, recalled one morning when he and Joe LeSueur began to tease O'Hara about his ability to compose at speed and on demand, at which "Frank gave us a look—both hot and cold—got up, went into his bedroom and wrote 'Sleeping on the Wing,' a beauty, in a matter of minutes." "Is there speed enough?" this poem appropriately demands, a question that reverberates throughout O'Hara's oeuvre. Yet despite his frequent public displays of poetic facility, even close friends were surprised at the extraordinary bulk of his Collected Poems when it appeared in 1971; I once weighed it on my kitchen scales and found it came in at just over three and a half pounds. And that was not all; in the years following its success (it won the National Book Award and demolished once and for all the notion that O'Hara was some kind of poetic dilettante or lightweight), Donald Allen discovered enough unpublished material to fill two further volumes, Early Writing (1977) and Poems Retrieved (1977). In 1978 Full Court Press published his Selected Plays. O'Hara's drama is, I think, worthy of more attention and performance than it has received, and I have included here the second version of Try! Try! This short verse play is at once a brilliant comedy of bad manners; a highly original take on that old chestnut, the love triangle; and a devastatingly witty exploration of the way O'Hara felt his war experiences had shaped his sense of modernity. The veteran Jack returns home, his "feet covered with mold," only to find his wife, Violet, in the arms of the snake in the grass John. In a vivid and moving speech, Jack recounts how his initial martial exhilaration curdles into self-doubt and despair; when he is eventually shot by a sniper on a beach in the Pacific, he feels almost relieved: "I fell like a / sail, relaxed, with no surprise. / And here I am." But if he expected the story of his sufferings to move or shame his auditors, he is soon disabused: "Do you think everything can stay the same," John demands, "like a photograph?" Frank O'Hara: Selected PoemsNo, O'Hara's work insists and illustrates, time and again. Indeed, his approach might be described as the opposite of photographic. His poetry delights in mobility, in metamorphosis, in excess, in consumption—particularly of coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol—, in interactions of all kinds, with taxi drivers, with paintings, poems, and symphonies, with friends and lovers (who else could have titled a poem "You Are Gorgeous and I'm Coming"?), with a louse he names Louise and describes trekking across his own body, with the city itself ("How funny you are today New York / like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime"), and of course, with the haloed stars of the silver screen whom he addresses in poems such as "To the Film Industry in Crisis," "Thinking of James Dean," and the delightful "Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)" that he dashed off on the Staten Island Ferry on the way to a poetry reading at Wagner College in February 1962. Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up The state of hurry in which O'Hara presents himself here is far from unusual; in poem after poem we see him "reeling around New York," "wanting to be everything to everybody everywhere," rushing "to get to the Cedar to meet Grace," or "entraining" with Jap (Jasper Johns) and Vincent (his lover, the dancer Vincent Warren) for a weekend in Southampton at "excitement-prone Kenneth Koch's." "If I had my way," he once responded when asked if he was ready for bed after an all-night party, "I'd go on and on and on and never go to sleep." His last surviving poem, an elegy for the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, celebrates "purple excess" and the "soul's expansion / in the night." O'Hara was only forty when he died as the result of injuries sustained in an accident that occurred in the early hours of July 24, 1966, after an evening spent at the home of Morris Golde on Water Island and at the discotheque in Fire Island Pines. The beach taxi in which he and his friend J. J. Mitchell were traveling broke down. As they waited for a replacement to arrive, a Jeep approaching from the opposite direction swerved to avoid the stranded taxi and travelers, and it struck O'Hara. He was taken by police launch and ambulance to Bayview General Hospital on Long Island. Despite an operation to stabilize his condition that afternoon, O'Hara died the following evening. He was buried in Green River Cemetery in Springs, where, some eight years earlier, he had visited the grave of one of his greatest heroes, Jackson Pollock. A line from "In Memory of My Feelings" is inscribed on his headstone: "Grace to be born and live as variously as possible." About the Author Mark Ford has published several books of poetry and is the author of the critical biography Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and London Review of Books; he teaches in the English Department at University College London. Frank O'Hara: Selected Poems, edited by Mark Ford Alfred A. Knopf

《巴黎评论》访谈E.L.多克托罗，小说艺术No.94 ------------------------------------------------------- 译：张旋 这篇关于E.L.多克托罗写作技巧的访谈在这个访谈系列里第一次采用了如下方式：由诗歌中心赞助，访谈选在座落于YMHA第92大街的纽约市著名的文化进修院（ New York City's famed cultural spa）中心礼堂举行。五百多位听众来到现场，一段简短的介绍之后，多克托罗和访谈者走进来，在舞台中心的两把椅子上面对面坐好。听众则在正式访谈之后才被允许提问。没想到，第一个来自观众席的问题暗示这种公共论坛对此类访谈并不是最适合的。一个有点迷糊的五十多岁的夫人很大声的问到，“是什么驱使你写下德累斯顿大轰炸？”基于曾在很多著名教育机构（萨拉·劳伦斯 Sarah Lawrence，普林斯顿 Princeton, 耶鲁戏剧学校Yale Drama School，纽约大学 and New York University，以及其它地方）培养出来的耐性，多克托罗很有策略地回答了他的提问者，说“她可能把冯·内古特的《五号屠场》当成了我的了，以及德累斯顿大轰炸干得“太漂亮了”，这个理由就值得任何人尝试。就在这场风波平息之后，听众们的问题变得更加切题了。这些问答也被列在这篇访谈的最后。 第一次面谈，多克托罗给人一种隐居的印象。而且他的声音柔和，个性突出引人注意。他的表达方法有点古怪（曾被《纽约时报》形容为“精灵古怪” ，elfin），他在论述某些话题时表达了一些非常高明的观点。在一大群听众面前做访谈这种事，丝毫也没有使他受到困扰。 采访者 你曾告诉我说，对作家来说最困难的事是写一个简单的家庭便条，如整理衣服的单子，或者开一个菜单。 E.L.多克托罗 我想说的是，我的小孩因为缺了一天课而要我给老师写张便条。我女儿，卡罗琳，她上二、三年级的时候，我正在吃早饭，她拿着饭盒、披着雨披以及其它此类的出现了，她说：“我需要给老师一张假条，而且校车马上就要来了。”她给我一个拍纸簿和铅笔；作为小孩子来说她未免太周到了。于是我先写下日期，然后开始，亲爱的某某女士，我女儿卡罗琳……然后我想到，不对，这不行，谁都知道她是我的女儿卡罗琳。我撕了这张，又重新开始。昨天，我的小孩……不，这也不对。太像一个证词了。就这样直到我听到外面车喇叭响。小朋友焦急起来。现在地上有一大堆废纸团，我妻子说：“真难以置信，难以置信。”她拿过拍纸和铅笔，三下两下就完事了。我想写一个完美的假条。这是一个非常有启示的经验。写作太困难了。尤其是短文。 采访者 你写一个非家庭文件，比如说小说，事实上要做多少次修改？ 多克托罗 我对用6~8遍草稿完成创作没什么概念。通常写一本书要花费我几年。《世界博览会》（World's Fair）是一个例外。这算得上特别流畅就写出来了的作品。我用了七个月写完了它。我认为这应该认作是上帝用红包奖励我的书。 采访者 你写东西的时候听到他在向你诉说什么了吗？ 多克托罗 不，不，我想象他恰好做了一个决定，好吧，此人应该得到报偿，那就让我用红包送他一本书。福克纳写《我弥留之际》只用了六周。斯汤达写《巴尔马修道院》用了十二天。这就是上帝曾向他们许诺的证据——如果确实需要证据的话。十二天！如果不是上帝，就是粗鲁的暴露狂。 采访者 在《世界博览会》中，你有一轮非常有趣的转换：用罗斯 、唐纳、弗兰西斯姑妈和主角的视点来写作。也就是说你有很多种声音，对吧。从一个人转到另一个人困不困难？ 多克托罗 几年之前我就对所谓的“口述”历史感兴趣了。报告人把他们自己的生活写成口述历史，这里面有一个非常明确的形式，我想我可以加以利用。那么，《世界博览会》的交谈本质是回忆：就是主角那些显示他假装要去做什么的话语。我的想法是，通过把这个话语糅合到其他家庭成员的口述历史中，使它变得更逼真。我放在一起供人阅读的东西，就像那些人对着磁带录音机说的话。你随时可以从中发现一条揭示虚构和现实之间区别的踪迹。这些声音的组合也有另一个优点，就是能在叙事进程中提供某种节拍或者延宕；我觉得这是值得做的事。 采访者 也就是说在这些语言形式中就有转化和替换的进程。 多克托罗 我最感兴趣的是对主要叙事者的声音进行转化，主角，爱德加，他越来越多地回忆起自己的童年时光，等他从婴儿长成青年，小孩的流利口才就受到抑制。就在爱德加对自己的回忆逐渐着迷起来，词汇会演化，语调也会演化。如此则产生某种双声部的效果，我想的是，这个正在回忆的男人用的是男孩的高声调。我确实喜欢那样干。但我并不知道自己正在那样做的。 采访者 你不知道？那么，这些如何评价？ 多克托罗 你有没有留意到我时常丢掉线索？ 采访者 正常的。 多克托罗 这是无法评价的。从没有评价过。作为作家唯一引导我的事是确信写作这种行为。全身心投入到组织在一起的事物中去发现你正在写什么。我就如此写《世界博览会》，其它的也一样。一本书的创意类似于一个发现。以中肯的角度说，当然了，你要表明你的预设（premises)，以及你要做什么。但是实在的说，在工作开始的时候，你真的不知道会发生什么。 采访者 一开始出现什么？是一个角色？你说的预设（premise），这是什么意思？是主题（theme)吗？ 多克托罗 哦，那可以表示任何东西。可以指一种声音，一幅画面；可以是人性绝望深处的某种运动。举个例子，在《拉格泰姆》（Ragtime）中，我对自己的写作非常绝望，我面对着新罗歇尔家中的一面墙，于是我开始写起这面墙。这是我们作家常常具有的那种生活。然后我开始写与这面墙相连的房子。它建于1906年，你明白的，于是我思索那个年代，以及百老汇大街会是什么样：电车顺着大街到达山脚；人们在夏季穿着白色的衣服以保持凉爽。总统是泰迪·罗斯福。一件事接着一件事，这就是一本书的开始：从绝望到那些小幻象。与《鱼鹰湖》（Loon Lake）相比较，后者则是对于地点的非常强烈的感觉，一个很亢奋的情绪，就在我发现自己在离开阿迪朗达斯克山脉多年之后又来到那里……而且当我发现一个标记，一个路标“鱼鹰湖”之后，所有一切都集中在一个点上了。总之，那词可以表示任何东西。 采访者 你有没有关于一件作品如何形成结局的理论？ 多克托罗 这里没有想过，没有。这不是完成工作的非常合理的途径。不好解释。我找到的一个解释似乎可以令人满意。我告诉他们，那就像是夜路行车：你的目光不可能延伸到车前光照射的区域之外，但是你仍能跑完全程。 采访者 你也有很多次走入死胡同（dead end）吗？ 多克托罗 哦，如果有死胡同，就不会有书。会有很多事发生。让你再次开始。但是如果真正写起来你可能会想着暗道机关，从篱笆底下进入田野，诸如此类。你并不会立刻就发现自己走错了道路。你感觉那个冲突是在第一百页上，实际上可能要砍掉五十页。于是你再回到老地方，你明白吧。这种说法类似于工作中的冒险——其实就是——仅仅因为那儿有一条很可观的收益：所有的书都比作家本人更想拥有它们自己的个性。这话出自它们自己而不是你。所有的书都彼此不像，就因为你为每本书带去一种不同的声音。我认为就是它使作家保存了活力。我恰好读了了欧内斯特·海明威最后出版的作品《伊甸园》——这实际上就是一个他没能完成的作品碎片——里面和别的书一样，他使用的是海明威声音。他在所有的书里都使用同一种写作策略，这种策略是在他事业的早期就出现并创建出来的。这也是他早期的辉煌成就。但是在他工作的最后十年或二十年就束缚了他，限制了他，并且击败了他。他一直使用海明威式写法，你明白吧。当然对他的成就来说这算不上坏事，是不是？但是，如果我们想进入一个更广阔的领域去说话，他就没有道路去发现它了。 采访者 这也把你改变很多吗？某种声音，举例来说，《鱼鹰湖》的声音就与《拉格泰姆》非常不同。你自己也像角色一样改变了吗？ 多克托罗 哦，你只是分亨其中的一部分，我假定，就像演员扮演它的角色。角色改变了，演员的声音、举止、体形、甚至他的化妆，所有都得变。 采访者 但是，举例来说，在房子里闲坐，你的举止就不会像帕特森的乔——《鱼鹰湖》里的流浪汉。 多克托罗 哦，你怎么知道的？ 采访者 我并不知道！ 多克托罗 写作是一种能被社会认可的精神分裂症。你可以在很多情形下脱离自己。我的一个小孩曾说过——这是一句可怕的真理，非常可怕，而且，当然了，只有小孩才能说出来——“爸爸总是隐藏在他的书里。” 采访者 但是你不也明显出现在自己书里吧？我是指《活着的诗人们》，你是哪个？ 多克托罗 我不知道。某人可能是我。或者是部分的我。实际上在最后两部书里，我把自己的记忆用作背景。但这不意味着我写了一部自传。我认识的乔纳森（《活着的诗人们》的叙事者）只是作为一个角色，不是我。也不是我从镜子中发现的家伙。在《世界博览会》中，我给了那个年轻主角我自己的名字，爱德加，但是我也不认为他就是我。你使用发明的材料就像你运用你从自己生活里获得的其它材料。书本是组合出来的：你把这些放在一起。你要是作曲的话：这首曲子就被称为小说。 采访者 你是在暗示《拉格泰姆》，举个例子说，所有那些非凡的历史回忆和事件，实际上是对真相的延伸？ 多克托罗 噢，不是，不是延伸：合适的词是“发现”或者“揭示”。这本书涉及到的（历史）全都是真实的。 采访者 你在哪儿发现，举例来说，特奥多尔·德莱塞（Teodore Dreiser）在《嘉丽妹妹》出版之后，对租房非常烦燥和花费大量精力校准一把椅子？这可是一个不同寻常的细节。 多克托罗 我了解很多作家的遭遇。这方面是我感兴趣的。德莱塞写那部杰出的小说。它出版于1900年；这仍是直到现在为止，美国人能写出的最好的小说。这是一个惊人的作品。他创建了一种声音，一种口语，是之于书里一个睿智的七十多岁老者的。我不知道他如何发现了他——写作时他还只有二十八岁。无论如何，这种声音属于那类看透一切的厌世者。这本书最大的成就应归于出版社（Doubleday，双日出版社），他们不喜欢它，害怕它，把它雪藏起来，什么也不说；我猜测只售出了四本。我也经历过这种让人发狂的遭遇。德莱塞在布鲁克林租了一个装修过的房子。他把椅子放在房子的中间并且坐好。椅子似乎并不在正确的点上，于是他移了一点点距离，他重新坐好。仍然不太对。他开始把椅子挪来挪去，试着整好它就像那什么——试着较正自己与整个宇宙的关系？他从来做不好，他就转了一圈又一圈。他这样做了很久，最终在座落于白色平原中的韦斯彻切斯特疗养院戒掉了。去疗养院的旅程并不让我感兴趣。（我感兴趣的）只有这个男人挪椅子。这就是德莱塞在《拉格泰姆》中，在那个房间试图将自己永久摆正（的原始材料）。 采访者 对J.P.摩根的描写，再举例说，你有没有在图书馆里花费大量时间。 多克托罗 对摩根的探寻主要是爱德华·斯泰因给他拍的大照片。 采访者 这就完了？ 多克托罗 哦，我需要与他交往的各类人的名字，铁路的等等诸如此类，我就这样推测我能从中洞察一切。但是我的搜寻太特殊了。经常性的，在《拉格泰姆》中，我为自己创造的某个谎言发现了可靠的源头，而且发现那并不是一个谎言，也就是说之前就有人考虑过它了。 采访者 作为虚构作家，一旦你过多地沉迷于它，在历史之外来构思一个情节，以及制造出一点点混淆？是不是就有很大的诱惑力？ 多克托罗 哦，这里没什么新意，你明白。我自己喜欢莎士比亚混淆历史的方式；还有托尔斯泰。这个国家，我们爱把历史看得很天真。我们认为这是牛顿的完全机械主义的宇宙，在那之外可以预见的是所有人都可去看和设置自己的手表。但是它非常像弯曲空间，而且有无限的可压缩和可膨胀的时间。是永恒的粒子混沌。当里根总统说纳粹党卫军与他们杀掉的犹太人一样都是受害者——你会把这称为混淆吗？以及那些重写教科书的日本教育家，他们想消除自己曾入侵中国以及1937年在满洲国干下过残忍暴行这个可耻事实！奥威尔告诉过我们。历史是一个战场。战斗经常性发生，因为过去控制着现在。历史就是当代。这就是为什么每一代都会写出新的来。但是大多数人的理解则是历史是神话的终极产物。也像对神话那样不尊敬，把它们在光天化日里加以篡改，试图铸造成新的历史，就像那些要扭曲真相的人铤而走险。当我说所有事在《拉格泰姆》中都是真的，我就是指这个。它们的真实就是我能造成的真实。我认为我对摩根的看法，举例来说，对此人的灵魂来说要比他的授权自传更真实……实际上，如果你想要一个坦诚回答，摩根从来就不存在。摩根、爱玛·古德曼、亨利·福特、伊夫琳·内斯比特，所有这些人都是虚构的。历史角色在书里只是母本、父本、教具、小男孩、小女孩。 采访者 你写作的时候脑里会有一个读者吗？ 多克托罗 没有，只有一个东西就是句子里鲜活的语言。在《但以理书》里，举例来说，我有一个清晰的想法是我觉得我能够搞点什么。但是在此之外我从没有什么读者，因为我从来不知道一开始几个月我都在干什么。事实上，关于《但以理书》，我写了一百五十多页又把它们扔掉了，因为写得太坏了。意识到我在写一本确实很坏的书就产生了一种绝望情绪，并强迫我去寻找最真实的声音。我甚至是在坐好之后胡乱地用打字机打点嘲笑我的作家的自负——而且这结果就变成了《但以理书》的开头。在这种折磨人的方式上我想指出的是但以理写了这本书，而不是我。一旦我获得了他的声音我就开始写了下去。这就是那类费力的写作方式。在你脑里没有空闲留给读者：除了你正在用语言你什么也思考不了。你的思想就是这本书的语言。 采访者 你从什么时候开始这样做的？你什么时候像这样子来把握到语言的。在大学里吗？你说肯尼恩（kenyon）是那种地方，在那里人们把对写作的看法类似俄亥俄人对足球的看法。 多克托罗 我实际上说的是，在肯尼恩（俄亥俄州第一家高等学府）这样的地方，我们做文学批评的方式如人们在俄亥俄州踢足球的方式。我们考证批评。我曾跟约翰·克鲁·兰色姆学习诗学课。我可以为华兹华斯的一首八行短歌写上二十页。当然这是宝贵的训练。让你在英语中学到精确的力量。这个效果，举例来说，是把拉丁词语和昂格鲁-萨克逊词语分开并列使用。不过，批评家拥有的是另一类不同的创造性头脑。这类更注重于分析的思想不存在你写作时可以采用的道路。你把材料都找来，组织它们，你关联这些写作之前还没有任何联系的东西。总之，所有的一切，与我受的训练一样有用，它带着我从语言走入错误方向。我花费了好几年时间用于写作以发现我的无知，在这条道路上，我感觉写作的道路就像一个孩子。现实中我也是在九岁就把自己想象成一个作家了。 采访者 九岁？在做这个宣言的时候是什么感觉？ 多克托罗 不管什么时候我阅读任何一本书，我都会以其故事鉴别它们就像用行动识别组合行为。我似乎有两种思想：我会爱上这个故事并且想知道下一步会发生什么，但是同时我又小心警惕着纸面上正在运行的事。我把自己定位于那类作家的小弟弟。我用手帮他指出一些事件。明白地说就是我并不真正地去写什么东西，因为阅读行为就是我的写作。在我随手写一些东西之前，有几年我只是把自己看成作家。这个开头不坏。它混淆了读者和作者。如果你仔细考虑一下，任何一本书你做为读者拿到手（如果是本好书），它就是一个印刷的电路板，你的生命将在此跑过——如此，当你阅读一本书，你就会与作者的思想观点相契合。你会把自己的创造力跟进同行。你想像那些词语，词语的声音，你想象你认识的人身上各种各样的特性——不是作者体验的特性而是你自己体验到的。如此一来，在这个本体论的层次上就很难分清读者和作者。童年时期我莫名其妙地漂进这个既是读者又是作家的区域：我公然宣称自己是个作家。我写了很多好书。我写了拉斐尔·萨巴蒂尼的《铁血船长》，那是我最好的作品之一。 采访者 让人惊讶的是有那么多人受《铁血船长》的影响——诺曼·梅勒也用较长篇幅提到它。 多克托罗 他真的这样做了吗？我很受鼓舞。他有没有读过威尔·詹姆斯的《烟雾》？那是我最爱的。 采访者 这种双管其下的运作方式是否意味着你要经常做个观察者？就是说，你要花费整天时间观察并且对自己说，嗯，这些可以用在书里？ 多克托罗 不是，完全不是。我没有把自己当成观察者。我感知事件（内在的动行机制）并且回过头去写我的感觉，我的直觉，会引导那些（感知）。大多数的人我都喜欢：我通常不能理解事件发生时对我意味着什么。我只能随后重建它，就像一个侦探。 采访者 我的意思是，如果某天晚上你去参加一个宴会，那儿有一对夫妇发生了一场惹人注意的争吵，这些不会成为你写作的材料吗？ 多克托罗 哦，我会收集这个，当然，我会先走出这间屋。你去明白一些事。但是我想说的是你不能很迅速地把它们转变和挪用它们。现实情况是在任何事里你能迅速利用的只有怀疑。你需要时间。举例来说，我曾听到过一个故事，说一个新泽西郊区的女管家秘密地生了一个小孩，并且把它抛弃到本社区另一家的花园里——包着襁褓放在花床上。小孩被发现还活着而且这女人也被人找到——这是个非常可悲的故事。嗯，在我听到这故事又过了大约二十年之后，我把它用在《拉格泰姆》的角色萨拉身上，这个故事发生在上世纪九十年代的新罗谢尔。这才是运用材料的方式。你收集所有的一切事可并不清楚将把它们怎么用——废旧材料和碎片。 采访者 你认为作家应该积累多少经验？你有没有暗示记者（举例来说）是事业的开始？或者把作家送到战场上，其它之类的。 多克托罗 你似乎认为作家可以有所选择——选这个工作或那个工作或者说参加战争。这可能只是美国中产阶级提的问题，因为在很多情况下，作家无法选择。如果他们在巴里奥（barrio）长大，或者被送往古拉格（ gulag，前苏联关押政治犯的劳改营，索尔仁尼琴著有《古拉格群岛》），这种经历是不管他们想要或不想要都会强加给他们。只是在这儿我们才会考虑经验来源：我看起来是同代人里错过了我们时代主流思潮的人。要理解第二次世界大战的战斗经验我太年轻了。但是我经历了越战那个嘈杂的年代。我一直很孤立。可能就是这个原因我赞同亨利·詹姆斯试图指明的，当时他以一位漂亮的女士作例子，这位女士正处于一种受庇护的生活中，某次散步到军营旁边的时候，她从窗户里听到士兵们在争吵。基于这个事件，詹姆斯说，如果她是一位小说家，她可能会回家并且写下一篇非常写实的军旅小说。我一贯同意这种想法。我们被预设成可以进入另一张皮肤。我们被预设成能够渲染并非我们自己的经验，以及利用我们从未遇到过的时空。这就是可以为艺术辨护的理由，而不是：去分亨苦难？写作教师无意义地教导学生，去写你理解的。这些事，当然，就是你必须做的，但是在另一方面看，如何理解那些只有写下来之后才能理解的东西？写作就是理解。卡夫卡理解的是什么？保险业务？所有这类忠告都是愚蠢的，因为它假定你必须参加战争才能写战争。好吧，有时如此，有时不是。我对自己的生活只有很少经验。事实上，我试图尽可能忽略它。太多经验起坏作用。 采访者 你能描述一下《鱼鹰湖》的起源吗？有一首诗贯穿了这本书。 多克托罗 你说的这首诗是我在这本书里最早写下的。我从来没有认为它是一首诗，我把它看成那种不能以任何方式插入到纸面上的句行。我按照韵脚来分行，在这种情况下它们可以被大声朗读。我在那时并不作此理解，我只是写一些东西大声朗读——我猜可能是我喜欢那两个词放在一起的声音——鱼鹰湖（Loon Lake）。我是某天晚上在一列私人单轨火车上获得这个富有启发性的想象的，它正穿越阿迪朗达克斯，同行的是一群黑帮分子，以及一个漂亮女孩，她裸着身体，拿着一条白色的裙子站在镜子面前试穿。我不知道那些黑帮从哪儿来。我知道他们要往哪儿去——去那个富人的营地。很多年以前，大群富豪在美国西部山间发现了这处广阔的区域。他们建筑了这个卓越的营地——C.W.波斯特，哈里曼，摩根——他们把这广阔的地区变成私人的乐园。于是我想象的营地就类似这个，和一群黑帮分子，这群下等人乘这列单轨火车奔向那个地方。这就是我构思的开始。我把这些材料发表在《肯尼恩评论》（Kenyon Review）上，并没运作它。我坚持反思那个画面，并且想弄清他们来自何处。时间处于上世纪三十年代，这是人们可以拥有私人列车的末期，就像现在人们拥有私人喷气飞机。这又是大萧条，于是那个看到这列飞奔的火车的人明显应该是一个游民，一个流浪汉。于是我就有了我的角色，乔，站在寒风里，漆黑之中，飞奔的机车的照明灯似乎使他感到眩目，而且就在火车行进之中看到那些人在绿台布桌子上喝酒，和那个女孩站在一间卧铺车厢里拿着一条裙子。就在傍晚时分，他随着列车行走的方向进于了这个地区。于是他脱颖而出开始行动并变成了我。 采访者 把你的方法讲一下，你怎么确定它什么时刻结束？ 多克托罗 就在这本书的情节变得难以避免。你选择狭路，事件就拥有了速度。而且在自由行动中产生了一种愉悦——就像一次速降滑雪运动。你清楚在你到达终点之前最后一幕是什么。有时是最后几行句子。甚至是什么也没有，仅仅是你看到自己期望的尽头，一种愉快的感觉使你开心起来，眼里放光。而且你意识到你已了结了。然后你想确认一下，你明白吧。你需要绝对的把握。你请求你爱的人阅读它，看看还要不要接着干。我记得当我结束《但以理书》的时候，我们住在南加州海岸的一所房子里。其中一间房子的窗户有滑动玻璃门。我问我妻子可不可以读那些稿。她说很乐意做。然后我让她坐在从大玻璃窗照进来的阳光下读它，我则出去到海边走一走。那是个周日，海滩上人很多；他们把加利福尼来的海滩的每一寸都实实在在地利用上了。与路相毗邻的是沙滩排球运动员和放风筝的人。小男孩在踢足球和扔飞盘。然后是晒日光浴的人，小孩子提着装沙子的小桶，一家一家的。然后是一些人沿着海水边缘扑啦啦地跑过。也有人在礁石的小水坑里捡贝壳。还有游泳的人。越过他们则是穿着紧身潜水服的冲浪者在等待他们的小船。再远处是像通气管一样的旗标在水上浮动。在那些浮标之外是滑水的人正把水面撕出一条水线。或者被降落伞拖上天。然后越过那些帆船，一个小舰队，是海平线。所有这些都处于阳光普照之中。这就像是一幅勃吕盖尔（Brueghel）的画，南加州的勃吕盖尔。我转了好几个小时，并且想着我的书，头脑里开始担心起来，太纽约化的一本书。完成了吗？有哪点好？我在停晚回家了，这房间现在已处于阴影里了，海伦还坐在原来那把椅子上，手稿全堆在桌子上，她不能说话；她正在哭，她的面颊上滚动着很多眼泪，这是不可置信的一幕——我之前从没品尝到这么大的幸福。 采访者 你在完成之后有多大的信心？我猜妻子的一场哭泣会对此有所帮助。 多克托罗 嗯，从某些方面说你已经投入了非同一般的时间和情感进去，而且你恰好为此感到荣幸。那么之后外界的波动，所有的你都可以置之不顾：你介意变成平庸之作。你担心有人买走这本书；如果你的出版商恰当地发行它；你被腰封、版式、版权的准确绘制而搅扰，你会担心一切事。就是不为这本书产生的反应打扰，人们是喜欢还是不喜欢，没有任何事可以增加写作的经验。这就是让你退步的东西。 采访者 一天之中，你用多少时间享受这种快乐？ 多克托罗 我会说我一天工作六小时，实实在在的写作可能只用了十五分钟，或一个小时，或三小时。你不知道那会是一个什么样的日子；你只是想去做你可以创作出来的东西。我在一页纸上用单倍行距打印出可能描写出了书里的大部分风景的一段。因此，如果我单倍行距和很少的空白，这里就大约有六百个词。如果我写一页，我就很快乐；这就是我一天的工作量。如果我写了两页，这就太不寻常了。但是当你搞了两页就会出现某种危险，就是第二天你会一个字也写不出来。 采访者 什么可以伤害这种快乐？不仅仅是对你，对作家来说最要紧的是什么？我记得我们曾经和约翰·欧文一起吃晚饭，我们曾讨论为什么酒精击垮了那么多美国作家。 多克托罗 作家的生活太冒险了，他做的任何事对他们都是坏的。发生在他们身上的任何事都是坏的：失败是坏的，成功是坏的；贫穷是坏的，金钱更是非常非常坏。什么好事也不会发生。 采访者 除了写作本身。 多克托罗 除了写作本身。如果他射击小鸟或动物或者他能找到的一切，你可以把这些都给他。如果他/她喝酒，你也给他/她喝，直到工作受到影响。对我们所有人来说，在努力写作和像普通人一样日复一日的谋生能力之间有一个亲密的联系。我们属于高危自毁人群。我们会因写作而惩罚自己吗？过错是指什么？我不知道。（这段可能是指缺乏外来约束） 采访者 但是这并不适合用在你身上，很明显的嘛。 多克托罗 好吧，时间会说出来的。我有一些小缺点，其中之一是节制。 采访者 你乐于与其他作家的交往吗？ 多克托罗 是的，当他们是我的朋友。 采访者 有没有人在你写完之后指点一二？ 多克托罗 通常直到稿子写完也没人指出点什么。有时候我会在公共场合朗读只为发现声音怎么样。在听众中找回点反应。但是倾向于尽可能长时间地抓住不放。 采访者 你做过很长时间的编辑，是吗？在编辑和写作技巧之间有什么关系？ 多克托罗 编辑技术教我如何把书拆散并重新组合。你知悉价值——张力的价值，在纸面上保持张力以及如何运作，以及你洞悉恰到好处的自我放纵，为何无需如此。你知悉怎样变得更自由和推进得更容易，读者永远不会去做。读者只看到一个印好的书而且只看到这个。但是当你像编辑一样看到一个手稿，你会说，哦，这是第二十章，但是它应该是第三章。你在这里轻松的工作类似于外科医生而对一个人的胸部，看到所有的血管和内脏等等一切。你与这些材料很熟悉，你可以把它们扔出去并且在护士面前骂脏话。 采访者 你曾经得到过什么忠告吗？ 多克托罗 没有，一条也没有。 采访者 好吧，在某些对你来说可能是具有决定性的观点上，听众有一些问题要向多克托罗先生提问。 听众【带黑框眼镜的先生】 你有没有思考过对那些没有名气的作家和艺术家——比如安德烈·萨哈罗夫来说，他们要担负什么义务？你有没有考虑过自己要做个公知？ 多克托罗 哦，是的。现代主义者使我们把写作当成一种极端个人主义的行为。但是，事实上，所有的作家都为某社区说话。如果你读过马克·吐温（举例来说），你就明白那儿有一大群人隐藏在那声音的后面。我不是想说确定的民族和地域，但是作为一个作家，你感知到你从前做过你恰恰不是为你自己说话。你记得人们怎样站在纽约码头上等待轮船运来狄更斯的最新一期小说连载吗？他们向船员喊：“小尼尔死了没有？”或者当维克多·雨果死的时候，所有法国人都陷入悲伤之中。这就是我的意思。这里有一种深层的关联。作家不是从真空中制造出来的。作家就是见证人。我们需要作家的理由是因为我们这个可怕的世纪需要见证人。小说家总是写人际交往中的秘闻。在二十世纪，其中有一类关系得到了发展，那就是人们与国家的关系，我们可以写它，而且我们有些人已经写下了。这形成一个无法改变的事实就是政府和人民变得更亲密了，（尽管）大多数是互相损坏。 听众【一个年青学生】 你在创意性写作课程在全国各地大量增殖中看到什么危险了吗？ 多克托罗 你是写作班的学生吗？ 听众【同上】 实际上，我正想下决定是否入学…… 多克托罗 好的，是有一个危险。自从第二次世界大战，大学就变成了作家的大赞助者。最初诗人为了谋生创建了这个计划。罗伯特·弗罗斯特为朗诵会拉来了一大批听众。迪伦·托马斯来了并且在第92大街这个非常大的舞台上朗读。突然之间就产生了一种新可能性：这就像诗人同样也发明了计算面芯片。诗人得到大学里的工作教诗学。然后他们邀请其它诗人过来并且朗读。一张网撒开了。写作的程序建立起来了。诗人为诗建立了一个信息交换系统。我们小说家从没得到过很多注意。与我们相比诗人之间彼此亲密。我们只和出版商有联系。这样我们在这一行就走得晚了。无论如何，我们现在也这样了。全国各地都有写作课程。最大的危险是你创作和训练的时候不是真的在写而是老师在写。换一个说法，有人去修一个写作课程，获得一个写作硕士头衔，并且立刻就在另一所大学里找到一份工作，教授其他年轻人使他们获得他们的写作硕士头衔。所有以下这些事就会接着出现——写作教师教出写作老师，这样就很不好。另一方面你看到另一个结果，一般来说，今天，年轻人的创作技巧可比以往强化多了。如果你读过福克纳的第一本小说你就会明白我的意思。那本小说草率地让人吃惊。很多由大学校园训练出来的新生小说家都要比他有技巧。另一方面说，大学训练出来的小说家的水平在下降；他们创作和关注的领域是普通人的卧室、客厅，家庭。门是关上的，窗户板也放了下来，就像外面没有大街，没有小镇，没有高速公路，没有社区。这就是危险。不过，如果你去考察所有由大学写作课程训练出来的好作家，他们的价值以及我们从他们那里得到的好运气，你可能不会遣责全部系统。【对那位学生听众说】为何你做一个决定之前不去查一下《易经》（I Ching)？ 听众【穿黑衣服的男士】 你有没有为风格的演化操心过，或者说你的书是不是都很有组织性？ 多克托罗 我并不追求风格。我在之前就曾试图解释清楚，我希望我的书“自我发现”。我认为作家明白他自己的风格，就在他全部写完了的时刻。因为你会发现自己的限制，你会听到你的声音在头脑里响。就像商店关门的时候。因而，我喜欢认定自己没有风格，我写了本书，这项工作它自己发现了自己的声音——它们的声音，不是我的。我则保持那种幻想，我认为……我希望……直到最终结局。 听众【同上】 有很多作家具有确定的风格，比如亨利·詹姆斯，这是真的吗？ 多克托罗 是的！看他工作时的修修补补吧。 听众【坐第六排的夫人】 写一部戏剧和写一部小说带给你的经验有什么不同？你还写别的什么吗？ 多克托罗 戏剧中简略提到的部分小说会去写。我有一次读到毛*泽*东1935年对军队发表的讲话的译文。这里而出现一种非常熟悉的声音。我觉得他的写作像格特鲁德·斯泰因。为了检验这个说法我就去找斯泰因的散文集，随机翻开一页。他们都重复名词，而不使用代词。实际上，他们重复所有词——没有什么只说了一次。句子的每次重复都有一些改变，这就使整个观念不是由句子而是由章节构成的。我有理由认为这个亿万人的领袖和格特鲁德·斯泰因在修辞上的所有共通之处都值得尝试。当然，有一个汉学家告诉我的，不仅仅是毛的散文，所有从中国语言翻译过来的散文都与格特鲁德·斯泰因相像。结果就是，无论如何，我找到了自己的道路。我让自己写下一段独白。说话者对所有事和所有人都怒气冲冲——一个爱发牢骚的人。然后我就在他用类似的修辞所作的断言和请求中听到反对的（声音）。我把这些都写了下来，然后把这一切保存下来并且立即给这场辨论中的其它人（positions)命名。一件事引出另一件，这些对话开始变成了戏剧，在这出剧里有个男人在晚宴上拔出一把枪；你像通常那样洗劫这场晚宴，接着还把那些贵客、孩子、都绑了起来，等等。这不是戏剧写作的通常方式。也不是典型的美国戏剧。也没有本土性。它一点也不感伤。（本土）人们不喜欢讨论他们童年。他们只从理想中把角色创造出来。他们以符合礼仪的方式交谈。这部戏在公共剧院里演了六周。我拥有一个非常出色的演员。查理斯托芬·普莱默就在其中，米克·尼科尔导演，导得非常好。所有的评论家——或者所有为纽约剧院写评论的人——憎恨它。现在它在大学和地区剧场里成了一部cult戏剧，我只要可能就想去看。总而言之，这是一个非凡的经验，而且我不希望再干一次。 听众【举手的男士】 它叫什么名字？ 多克托罗 名字是《餐前酒》（Drinks Before Dinner)。 听众【围红围巾的女士】 你有没有类似的经验，就是当你在写之前把一个故事讲给某些人听，结果这故事就丢失了。 多克托罗 是的，当你与别人谈论一个故事，就是在创作它。你把它们散播到空气中了，讲完就没了。 采访者 真是如此吗？你从没在晚会上讲过你觉得可能会用到的故事吗？ 多克托罗 偶尔，你很想炫耀一下。这样的时刻太美妙了，而且你想打动别人。于是你把秘密放出来，私密的事，呈现在桌面上。这就是全部，这就完了，你再不会利用它。这样做是非常疏忽大意的。可能你也有一个定论就是不会去用它们，真的不需要它们。因为某些我们全都拥有的故事我们永远不会用，而他们最大的价值就是未使用。总之，最好是约束自己。 采访者 这个教导肯定是非凡的，因为有很多故事都非常奇妙，很有可能会在晚会上顺口讲出来。我想到了你在长岛高速公路上遭遇抢劫的故事。它出现在《活着的诗人》的一段独白里。 多克托罗 但是我在写出来之前并没有讲过，如果我这样做，我可能就无法用它了。 采访者 保留着这样的故事，你在晚会上会变得非常可怜。 多克托罗 另一方面说，当我拔出枪来就会完全出乎你的意料。 ------------------------------------------------- 完结。未校，谢绝转载。

V.S.普里切特，小说艺术No.122 访谈者：Shusha Guppy, Anthony Weller 发表于《巴黎评论》1990年冬字号 V.S.普里切特生于1900年12月16日。过去的两年间他出版了一本《六十年游记选集》、一部传记，以及第九本文学批评集。九十岁的他仍然是一个多产的作家，甚至出版了《短篇小说全集》（1990）之后，又发表短篇集《一个无忧无虑的寡妇》。虽然他在多种文学体裁均有建树，但他最有名气的还是短篇小说和游记。 当把他的小说与乔伊斯和契诃夫相比时，普里切特声明是肖恩·奥弗兰（Sean O'Faolin）,莱姆·奥弗莱厄特（ Liam O'Flaherty） 和弗兰克·奥康纳（ Frank O'Connor）让他明白短篇小说能做到什么。尤多拉·韦尔蒂曾说：“普里切特的大部分小说都有一个燃烧的、活跃的开头，像一团旺盛的火堆。无休无息还越来越旺，火焰中飞溅的火花像一首诗或者一个魔术戏法，耗尽自己，什么不浪费。他是我们语言世界里伟大的快乐使者之一。” 在他父亲的强迫下，普里切特十五岁就离开学校到毛皮市场里工作——此体验被他当作初期的小说《没什么像毛皮》（Nothing Like Leather ,1935）的材料。二十岁的普里切特去了巴黎，他在那儿“过着糟透了的波希米亚式生活，而且写一些可怕的、矫柔做作的散文作品。”他努力使自己工作起来像一个店铺里的售货员，此后他为《基督教科学箴言报》报道爱尔兰革命，以及被派驻西班牙做新闻记者。他第一本书《行走西班牙》出版于1928年，就像他大部分已绝版的书，这也是一本他在这个国家的游记作品。 八卷批评集的大部分文章属于为《新政治家》写的周专栏作品，普里切特后来变成那里的文学编辑，并出版了批评传记《巴尔扎克》（1973），《屠格涅夫》（1977），和《契诃夫》（1988）。他对学院法则不感兴趣——他的目的是给作家一些启发——而且到最后，他的传记内容会回到那些作家的书。 普里切特是英国笔会和国际笔会形式上的会长，也是伦敦作家协会的主席，而且在1975年被封为骑士。他与妻子多罗西在伦敦普利茅斯山附近一处狭窄的乔治时代风格的房子里一起生活了55年。他的会客厅可以俯瞰摄政公园的荫盖。访谈就是在这里分两次完成的，当时是1990年。从私人角度说，普里切特是个小个子，很有活力的男人，生着一张生动阳光的脸，歪着嘴的笑使他显得要年轻好几岁。他吐词又快又轻松又精确。他拥有那些热衷于谈话和对别人感兴趣之人的热情和才气。当一个雨天会谈结束之后，普里切特就讲他正在写的一个故事，他站在布满书籍的起居室装成一个腹语艺术家。一边说一边咯呼地笑着，手插在自己开司米毛衣的衣袋里，他出乎意料地轮换着用自己所有角色的口音来讲话，而且把它的故事带处现实。欧文·豪曾说他“没有一个活着的人能比他写出更好的句子来，”九十年代，V.S.普里切特仍然在把他的句子写进故事里。比如他就下，“障碍创造自己（intervention invents itself）。” 采访者 你的作家生涯进行了很长时间而且没有磨灭过，关于这点我们可以花费好多小时来讨论它的方方面面，但是让我们从它的起始来谈：你是你家庭（你曾经将其定义为中下阶级）里出来的第一位作家。你是否思考过你的才能来自哪里？ 普里切特 我不太清楚。我父亲是一个没有艺术细胞的商人。他批量购买纺织品并把它们卖给公众。我记得曾看到他闻和抚摸丝绸，并且想知道他在干什么——他在确定其品质。我母亲是个会讲故事、会模仿人的家庭主妇。她常常在买东西回来的时候用不同的口音和举止模仿刚才遇到的人。她不时给我读些幽默的故事。她喜欢的书有一本是《守夜人的故事》（The Tales of The Night Watchman by W. W. Jacobs）。它有一个常见的开头：“好吧，就像我某天说过，守夜人说，”并且从这里开始。它们有很好的对话而且非常活泼。我妈常常要留意自己的笑声。我祖父是约克郡公理会的执行牧师。他一直是一个优秀生（在那个时代直到十九世纪末），那时有一个观念，就是你可以通过教育使自己在这个世界上获得地位。他有一个优美的嗓音和雄辩的口才。一些邻居家的主妇用自己的钱把他送到神学院进修了一年，他变成了公理会的执行牧师。假期里我常被送到他那里并享受他的陪伴。他很喜欢在约克郡的砍伐地和荒野中散步，并常常带着我。他会问我，你没有学希腊文和拉丁文？然后从口袋里掏出一枚硬币，把上面的拉丁文指给我看让我受到他的启蒙。或者他会说，你必须马上就读麦考利（Macaulay）！或者，你没有读过拉斯金？你必须马上就读！我当时只有9~10岁。 采访者 你也常常提到你的老师巴特莱特（W. W. Bartlett），他的影响是什么？ 普里切特 我到达利奇州小学上学，那就是我们住的地方。巴特莱特先生非常特殊。他从不拘泥于我们的课程，他打破了所有教育当居的教条和常规。他使我们得到极大的解放。举个例子，他常常花一整天的时间而不是只用45分钟来讲历史，或者把我们送到周围乡下去画野花。这对一个未来的作家太完美了，但对那些有野心，只想通过考试并找到好工作男孩来说就不适合了。最后巴特莱特先生离开此地并成了一个非常著名的教育家；他的职位被一位也非常棒的女教师取代。她曾叫我们去附近的霍尼曼博物馆去画点我们喜欢的东西。我带回一幅护身符的画，这是她喜欢的。而我因此得过一件奖品——一套三卷装口袋本的拉斯金文集！我一直保存着这个。我曾到达利奇展览馆去看大卫和普桑那些人的画，一点也不懂他们，他们全都在拉斯金的书里。我那时12岁，阅读他们对我来说比较费力。但是我还是读到第三卷，在其开始的50到70页是文学中“感情的误置”，他辩证地说到在那些把人性感觉匹配到无生命之物上是不正确的，他拿起荷马的作品并指出其中的错误。这是本教人如何写批评的书，我很难理解它。 采访者 你最早受到的影响是什么？ 普里切特 我第一次感到刺激的阅读，我猜测，是瓦尔特·斯各特（Walter Scott），我五岁的时候就开始读他了。我以自己的方式漫步“苏格兰”很长时间，直到邻居家一位年老的夫人过来对我说，为什么你把时间浪费在所有这些垃圾上？我相当假正经。 采访者 你说过从十岁起你就想要做个作家了，那时候你开始写什么了吗？ 普里切特 我家里有一套儿童百科全书，在里面我读到一篇关于阿罕布拉宫的评论，于是我决定写一篇关于小说卡斯蒂利亚人和阿阿伯人的战争，充满战斗性和浪漫性。我坐下写了一百多页；然后我父亲发现了并且用自命不凡来开我的玩笑，迫使我烧掉了它。很长一段时间我都因为这个对他抱有很大的怨恨。 采访者 你十五岁离开学校，推测说你是因为供不起。但是当时有给你这种优秀生的奖学金。你没有去申请吗？ 普里切特 依据那些古怪的教学法，巴特莱特先生确定我什么也得不到！那个奖学金测试题是关于诺亚方舟的，他们想考的是事件和人物还有日期这些历史知识。我想这个故事相当无趣，但是航行却很有刺激性，我就编造了一个航行故事——人们在小船里和动物们在干什么、鸽子飞进来，以及所有这类事。自然地我的测试要失败。于是我就被送进毛皮市场工作了。 采访者 什么毛皮？你做哪种工作呢？ 普里切特 有人告诉我父亲毛皮这行大有前途。一开始我是个坐在办公室的男孩，后来我成了一个信差，向码头和仓库送一些文件之类。这非常振奋，因为我不再被一整天关在办公室里而是可以出去转转。同时，市场的高层人员都受过良好教育。他们读过很多东西，而且我也被当一个作家的想法迷住了。这时我开始写一些小片断。但是真正激励我的是去听本地的讲座；其中一个主题是关于弥尔顿的，当我开始阅读《复乐园》，不是《失乐园》。我写了一篇散文，那位演讲的夫人公开的宣称它是最棒的。这太惊人了！我把它投到两家本地报纸，但没有人发表它，我头脑发了高热。 采访者 那你怎么离开毛皮市场的？ 普里切特 我在学校里开始学德语和法语，而且在那些人中间很出色。之后我用法语工作得相当卖力，但得到一个非常好的决定。四年之后，商行里给我钱（我记得是二十镑）和一年假期把我送到巴黎。钱很快就花完了，我找到了一个在照片商店的工作。那非常无聊，但是我也遇到了各种各样的人，艺术家和摄影家，没有太大的名气，但是非常有趣。他们全都带着帽子围着围巾，穿着鲜艳的衣服。同时我开始写作。我形成了一个确切的观念就是如果你要写作，你就写你知道的和你正在做的。于是我写一些关于生活在一座巴黎旅馆十五层楼上的生活，并且把它投给《基督教科学箴言报》，让我高兴的是他们接爱并发表了它。 采访者 是什么使你忽略了所有英国刊物而选择了一份美国报纸？ 普里切特 我父亲是一位基督教科学派并且订阅过这份报。这是一份重要的报纸，有广泛的发行地区，就像伦敦的《泰晤士报》。著名的美国作家都为它撰稿，当它编订得又好又慷慨之后。我得到发表的机会非常振奋，又投了其它的过去，也被发表了。当创使人艾德（Eddy)小姐去世后，无论如何，宗教论争出现在其继任者之中导致其损失掉一大部钱，而且他们突然就没钱支付给供稿人了。我快饿坏了，而且如果我的收租婆没有注意到我什么都没有吃，晚上也不出去，并且瘦成了皮包骨，我就死了。她给了我一些回伦敦的钱，我拿着它去看我伦敦的编辑。他是个文雅的人，而且他觉得没有拿到钱是很大的一件事。他能做什么呢？他把我送到爱尔兰去写一系列评论。那时正好处于1921-1924年的动乱中，他让我游历全境去写，不仅是战争，尤其是爱尔兰那些还活着的并为生存挣扎的普通老百姓。 采访者 《尤利西斯》1922年出版时你正好在巴黎。你读它了吗？你对它有什么想法？ 普里切特 是的，我读了。尽管它是本非常昂贵的书，我买不起，有人借了本给我，我很努力的读完了它。我认为它是本惊人的书！第一章，写得不连贯，运用形容词的特别令人气恼。阅到后来我才意识到这本书有多么重要。这是一种新的风格，而且后面几章太精采了——一个著名的段落是老妇在夜壶上的产生的一段意识流——举例来说。 采访者 你在爱尔兰的时候叶芝（Yeats）和格雷格里夫人（Lady Gregory）正在组建一个围绕着修道院剧场（Abbey Theatre）的文学小圈子。做为一个记者你有没有接近他们特权？ 普里切特 有。我给叶芝写信并去采访他。他让人印像深刻——高大，可敬，有戏剧化的姿态和优美的嗓音。有天我陪他喝茶，我记得他拿起一个茶壶，看到里面满壶凉茶，他打开乔治时代风格的房子的窗户并且把里面的东西全倒在广场上！对他来说，诗一样的语言随时随地脱口而出。 采访者 你还遇到他们那个圈子里其它人吗？ 普里切特 有啊。幸运的是，都柏林是个小城市，找人和拜访他们都不难，但是我从没去他们的沙龙。有个临海的小旅馆，詹姆斯·斯蒂芬（James Stephens）常到那儿看小船来船往，我也常到那里找他。他非常健谈——那儿的人全都是。我遇到肖恩·奥凯西（Sean O'Casey）很多次。我记得他趴在桌子上写作那些血腥的戏剧！在那些作家之外，我遇到了很多有趣的到那里旅行的人，包括我第一任妻子。我们只在一起生活了很短时间。 采访者 这个圈子的另一个成员乔治·拉塞尔（George Russell），爱尔兰诗人AE（拉塞尔的笔名），他发表了你第一篇短篇小说，是吗？ 普里切特 AE是个神秘和潇洒的老家伙。他极其善谈，他还编过《爱尔兰政治家》。我把短篇小说处女作投给了他，这是关于一个吉普塞人卷入一次战斗，而且不小心刺死了自己的驴子并导致自己被杀，对手却没死。很煽情很华丽——我从没和吉普塞人打过交道，AE却非常奇怪地接受了它。他把它保存了两年最终也没有发表。他说爱尔兰政治形势太紧急了！后来他发表了我的一个故事，但分文都未付！ 采访者 从爱尔兰离开后你又作为《基督教科学箴言报》的通讯员被派到西班牙，这是你与西班牙的长期情谊的开始。读你写这个国家的书，每个人都会获得丰富的知识并受到影响。西班牙在什么地方打动了你？ 普里切特 爱尔兰没有改变我对生活的想法，但西班牙做到了。我学习西班牙语，浏览了广阔的地区，读了西班牙文学的经典大作。西班牙的迷人之处在于它是个天主教国家，但是又有很多知识分子是自由思想者。他们不喜欢耶稣会士把持教育。吉内尔·德·拉·雷欧斯（Giner de los Rios）在西班牙领导了一次改革教育的运动，基本理念是他从德国、法国和英国带来的，就像革命。他创建了一所学生公寓——--Residencia de los Estudiantes——很像是巴黎的 the Cite Universitaire。所有的作家和知识分子聚集在那里。他们举行演讲会并不断地讨论，我常常去那里。我在西班牙学到的比所有地方都多，我也遇到了大量的当代作家。我真正遗憾的是缺乏冒险活动。我非常了解西班牙；我的书《行走西班牙》就是对它的回应。但是这里面没有冒险活动。我一直想知道罗伯特·斯蒂文森（Robert Stevenson）如何懂得去写冒险活动的；为什么我写不出来？这本书里唯一的冒险活动是跑到一群强盗中间，他们非常好客。其它就只是简单的游记了。 采访者 你有没有遇到那些后来变得非常有名的“98一代”的作家，比如乌纳穆诺·尤戈（Unamuno y Jugo）， 奥尔特加·加塞特（Ortega y Gasset） …… 普里切特 当然，所有人都在。我常去他们的演讲会，或作私人拜访。奥尔特加特别喜欢我。我读了乌纳穆诺的《生命的悲剧意识》（ Del Sentimiento tragico de la vida），它给了我一个强有力的思想，帮助我理解我以前从不理解的天主教信仰。虽然我并不想变成天主教徒，在西班牙的两年我收获很大。 采访者 然后你回到伦敦，有没有发现工作好找了？ 普里切特 那时我已是个出版了书的作家和记者。我为《新政治家》撰稿。它的文学编辑是雷蒙德·蒙蒂莫（Raymond Mortimer）。整个战争时期我都在为他写评论。 采访者 你的许多散文是关于经典作家的，比如塞万提斯、托尔斯泰和巴尔扎克。他们是你的理想吗。 普里切特 战争时期的报纸和新书都很少。因此雷蒙德·蒙蒂莫想到一个好方法就是写那些过去的作家。这确实是一个好机会让我能为我欣赏作家写点东西。 采访者 对你来说，你的职业训练来自新闻业。在（写作）训练方面有两种不同的观点。迈克尔·弗瑞（Michael Frayn）说虚构作家必须像记者那样工作一段时间，以保持其抓住现实的能力。另一个观点，伊夫林·沃相信新闻对作家有害，而且要尽最摆脱它越快越好。契诃夫尤其憎恨这个职业，他写到如果自己被迫做这一个记者，他也不希望自己作为这种人而死。你的观点是什么？ 普里切特 我没有别的门路。我认为经验是不可靠的。我知道那些从没接触过新闻业的作家，但是他们有自己的方法。一个创造性的作家能够自己塑造而不是靠系统学习。但这也有冒险成分；此人必须确定和证明自己。因此，我不为记者生涯遗憾。我认为是一个很好的职业训练。 采访者 你有没有觉得生活和写作相互影响？ 普里切特 我一直认为生活和文学是相互纠缠的，而且这些纠缠正是我探索的。 采访者 我们就来谈论一下“探索”。你曾把自己定义为“写作者”（a man of letters)。就像安东尼·巴格思（Anthony Burgess）曾经评论你的同名散文集，说这个名字是一个可爱的旧式风格的尊称，代表的是比我们平时更广泛的，更宏大的范畴。实际上，你涉及了所有文学体裁，唯独缺少诗歌和戏剧。你说你早先也想做一个诗人。你有做过尝试吗？ 普里切特 噢，是的，但是情况不好。我十七岁的时候曾给一位女友写过一些爱情诗。但是我意识到自己做不了这个，我就放弃了。 采访者 戏剧呢？你写的对话又机警又精确，我想知道你是否想把它们改编到戏剧舞台上。 普里切特 没有，我从没有想过为舞台写作。这里需要的特殊技巧是我没掌握的。 采访者 那些年里，你在写对话方面有没有更新什么经验法则？ 普里切特 这不太好回答。写对话对我来说是很自然的。我不是一个写情节的作家。我发现写一个复杂的情节很困难。复杂性，情节结构和对话对我有很大的激发作用。演讲者写下他的戏剧就像他一直干的，他并不知道自己干得是好是坏。自然，无论如何，对话把我从所有我写不好的情节中解救出来。对话是我可干好的一件事，经常干和喜欢干的。对话是我的诗学形式。我不能通过诗保存我的生活。对话是我最接近于诗的作品。 采访者 你的作品中也有一些超现实主义元素吗？ 普里切特 是的，有一些。一个通常的说法是人们的思想会因为某个惊人观念而变化。我重读我的故事中那些特别值得注重的地方时，我想，我一定是在什么地方听到过这些，我并没有虚构它们。对我来说是在火车上或公共汽车上听到的。举例来说，我写的那些在毛皮市场里工作的人们绝对惊人的对话就听来的。这是一个值得指出来的叙述方法，一种别具一格的叙述方式，但是无论如何，对那些精采的片刻，它们总是以不可思议的地方乱成一团。 采访者 你最知名、最受赞誉的工作是你的短篇小说和游记。是什么你吸引到短篇小说而不是长篇小说呢？ 普里切特 短篇小说一下子就吸引了我就是因为它的短小，而且我本身也偏爱它。它显示出一个由很多孤立的事件组成的确定的现实观念。短篇小说最重要的事是细节，不是情节。情节是有用的，仅仅在于它提供了那种不是描述性的，而是推动行动发展的细节。很多关于我的故事的批评家都忽略了它。 采访者 你的长篇处女作是什么时候写的？ 普里切特 1927年，我回到西班牙，穿越其国土，并且写了一本书。出版者接受这本《行走西班牙》的条件是，我也要写一部长篇小说给他们。我从没想过当长篇小说家，然后说自己做不到。实际上，我给了他们一本短篇小说集，但他们仍索要那本承诺的小说。《行走西班牙》卖了六百册，那本短篇小说集比我此后写的所有小说都卖的多。那本集子的名字是《西班牙童贞女》。 采访者 哦，这样的话，你是被胁迫着写的那个长篇？ 普里切特 是的，《克莱尔·德拉默》（Clare Drummer)。写得不好，夸张。是关于爱尔兰的爱情的，里面包含一种爱尔兰式古怪风格。批评家们批判它，只有一两个好心地说它大有希望。 采访者 但是你继续写了五部。那些在批评家和公众这两面又得到什么评价？ 普里切特 我写了一部基于毛皮市场得到的经验的小说。这部《什么都不像毛皮》（Nothing Like Leather,1935），卖了一万两千册。《死人的引领》（ Dead Man Leading,1937）是一部探索巴西和旅行亚马逊的小说。我从没有真正到过亚马逊地区，但是我通过自己想像出来的探险，以及去查大英帝国博物馆的图书。让我惊奇的是，他还被高度赞扬。不幸的是，它与《慕尼黑》同时发行，并且在商业败下阵来。但是我又再写了一个《贝伦克尔先生》（Mr. Beluncle,1951），它本在战后出版的书，这本带有很大的自传性的书卖得很好。 采访者 在《贝伦克尔先生》里，你写到你父亲。他读过这本书吗？ 普里切特 我想他翻开过，但是可能让他感到无聊。他说，我对此无话可说。他不喜欢读书。 采访者 但是他知道是关于他的。 普里切特 当然，他知道，因为会把这些告诉他。 采访者 你曾说短篇小说尽量说清楚一件事，而长篇小说则提供整个宇宙图景。你是否常使自己偏向于做个短篇小说家？ 普里切特 我觉得自己确实是想做短篇小说家，因为我是个没有耐性的人。我缺乏写长篇小说的耐性。 采访者 你也确实写出了一些很张的短篇小说，甚至可称为中篇小说。 普里切特 长一点的短篇小说很不错。我喜欢它们。这是完全不同的情况，因为你有一个确定的主题，实验室们支撑和帮助你一直写下去。但是长篇小说类似于一个非常庞大的树，大量枝条从各种方向生长出来。至少十九世纪的小说就是如此，我写的也是这样的小说。这对我来说很难，但是短篇小说和长一点的短篇小说不错。我写了很多。 采访者 曾听说你把一百二十页浓缩为二十页。 普里切特 确实有过。我写完很多故事都会说，不，不，这要删掉，那也要删掉。 采访者 通常这样做是为了把握总体性，以及对故事作全局调整吗？ 普里切特 我认为主要在于加速进度。你可能过于着迷某些自得的幻觉或细腻描写了。关键在于让它运行的好，轻盈地披覆其上。 采访者 保持灵活。 普里切特 是，很准确。就是灵活性这个词；我觉得用这个词描述我的的故事特征很合适。 采访者 这实际上也是你自己用过的词。 普里切特 是吗？你在哪儿看到——没想到我这么聪明。 采访者 你说过发现自己是个人道主义者是一个大启示，而且说帮助角色纠正自己是一个作家的责任。一个公正的故事其目的是使所有的角色，都被赋予基于他们的立场发言的机会？或者你的意思是他们将被公平的对待？ 普里切特 我认为他们应该全被公平对待。在我那篇关于二手职业者的故事《坎布威尔的美女》中，那里有很多种角色。其中有一个类似于镜子的观察者，我想，只是这些（小说里的）人有此需要，其它不好说。而且作家也绝不能把角色当成完全可以支配的。他可能必须在某时出现在某场景。实际上，这也能获取其它的关于生活的纠正，如果后来他突然发现了什么。但是你要让他感觉到他是在正确的做事——就是说他也有其它工作。他保持自己的生活，就像主角也在保持自己的生活。我认为在故事里安插一个论断式人物很好。它们会提供一些不同的反省方式。 采访者 那么角色在故事里可能会评判他人，但作家将不直接出面评判他们。 普里切特 对，让他们自己互相评判。 采记者 这是对十九世纪小说的非常大的颠覆思想。 普里切特 是的，非常大。我对交换看法很忧虑，而且总得来说，人性变化丰富很有趣。甚至每一个人都是一个颠覆；他的思想和生活有多种多样的动机。有些是最好的，有些是优良的，有些是合格的，但并不都有结果。 采记者 让我们谈谈第一人称和第三人称叙事之间的区别。你说过你一开始在你著名的小说《幽默场景》里用的是第三人称，后来你又决定用第一人称。你有没有一种方法用来预先确定小说叙述的语调？ 普里切特 我用第三人称写了第一部分，细致分析之后，突然吃惊地发觉自己用对话写会比正在写的好的多。如果我仅仅是简单的跳过去，此人就能够讲述他自己的故事。人们总是比你想像的精采。我不会干涉他，也不会给他我的想法。他们要成为自己。从聆听他人中可以理解这一点。你通过生活创造角色。通常来说，我发现这句话非常不可靠。如果我把你放进我的故事，我必须去了解其他一些人，第二个，或第三个来确立一个角色。而你早先的设定就会消失。一个真正的角色要从这三个人中浮现出来。 采访者 你知道乔伊斯·凯里（Joyce Cary）吗？他是运用第一人称的大师。 普里切特 他是的。我不太了解他，但我认识他。一个非凡的人，一个非常强壮的人。他常常住在牛津，我到他那儿拜访过。他看起来非常有学识；他是万事通。在非洲，他曾经是一位杰出政府官员。他是一位了不起的编著者，而且还是个画家——不是特别天才，但比我们大多数人画的好。他的背景很有启发生。他甚至有广泛的昂格鲁—爱尔兰背景。每个了解爱尔兰那个时代的人都能立刻认识到。他很严肃。牛津把他变得有点庄重，但是他并不真的庄严。他非常活泼。举例来说，在牛津我正在聊天，突然前门传来一个声音。他双手一拍说，这是我的炸肉片！这是我的晚餐！亲爱的老某某又把我扔到在我的炸肉片里去了！有人把肉夹在信里送来了。他急急忙忙地跑到门旁，捡起来，打开门说道，哦，她已走了。我听到他朝着大街喊，谢谢你！谢谢！谢谢！他很容易激动。 采访者 让我们谈谈你的散文，在这体裁上，你也是一位公认的大师。你什么时候开始写评论的？ 普里切特 写小说和游记这些大约能收到二十五英镑——不够维持生活。于是我开始写评论以获得固定收入。 采访者 你曾说一或两个好的故事抵得上这世界上所有的评论。这是不是因为故事更有想象力？或者创造性？ 普里切特 如果一个故事真的很棒，它就会一直活着，不管别人怎么思考它。评论，无论如何，来来往往。根据风尚而改变。一个故事永远是一个故事。 采访者 写评论有不同的途径吗？ 普里切特 我认为评论家首先必须清理自己的思想。一个人写作一本书，有可能需要好几年才把它出版出来，里面肯定有很品格。是什么呢？评论家区别他并寻找材料。我常常寻找作家的真正声音，因为大多数优秀的作家都有自己特殊的声音。如果他没有这个声音，或者主题可能太突出了，这本书就是无趣的。 采访者 在评论和运用想象力的写作之间，你有没有感觉到什么冲突？ 普里切特 不觉得，尽管它们明显是不同的。当你写一个故事，你就想变成你笔下的角色。在评论中你就想进入别人创造的世界，而且那也是想象性的、创造性的行为。 采访者 你欣赏哪些评论家？ 普里切特 年轻时我觉得利顿·斯特雷奇（Lytton Strachey）很出色，我也欣赏弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫。后来我有点厌烦她，但现在我又认为她非常棒，仍然有活力。我喜欢作为评论家的爱德蒙·威尔逊（Edmund Wilson），因为他有一个令人信服的，概括性强的头脑。 采访者 你曾写过巴尔扎克、屠格涅夫和契诃夫的传记。它们与通常那些写事实的传记不同。更注重于从叙述者角度，一些个性化影响作用在后世作家的生活和工作方面。是什么使你选择这些作家作为目标？ 普里切特 一方面是我要听从出版社的要求，另一方面源于我自己。当我年轻时，我的偶像是巴尔扎尔。他是我读到的第一位法国作家，我在巴黎的住处与他的故居很近。我兜里装了一本《驴皮记》绕着他的房子走，后来，不管什么时候，我在旅行之中，我都拿着他的一本书去读。很多他写的小商贩和店主都让我想起我家族里的人，特别是我的父亲。甚至巴尔扎尔本人在庄重方面就像我的父亲。在另一方面，我对十九世界的俄罗斯作家有长久的兴趣。 采访者 他们有什么特别令人着迷的地方？ 普里切特 我特别喜欢他们的地方是他们的自然和清醒。他们是欧洲架构之外，生活于工业革命之前的人；他们的小说来自人物的情绪，个性和他们的感觉——并不是伟大的情绪——我们都能感觉到，他们浮现在日常琐事中构成我们的生活。清醒对我来说非常重要。当我开始写作时，我会变得戏剧化，过于浪费精力在想像和描述上。但是现在我清醒就是一切——我试着保持在锋刃般清醒。许多西班牙作家很清醒，还有司汤达。托尔斯泰和屠格涅夫在他们那方面是非常精采的。他们的语言是朴素和充满张力的。陀斯妥耶夫斯基不同。他非常敏锐地洞察了角色的情绪和思想的纠结。 采访者 你的风格也被称赞为清醒和自然。莫利·凯恩（Molly Keane）把它描述为“一个字也不多，一个字也不少。”你有意识地培养了这个风格吗，还是它们是自然进化的？ 普里切特 我只想用自己的方式写作，并不想改良别人的，包括那些我欣常的作家。 采访者？ 写作容易吗？你给人这种印象，就是你自然而然。 普里切特 不，并不容易。完成创作很困难。我喜欢写作的过程，但是这并不是容易的。 采访者 你对自己工作的优缺点有没有一个清醒的认识？ 普里切特 当然，我在反省时候就很清醒。当我反省时我想：噢，这并些不太好，但是这些则非常好，或者这些比所有人对我说的都好。我常常重写。 采访者 当你写一个故事时，那个过程是什么样的？ 普里切特 我习惯手写。我的打字技术是令人绝望的。我会搞很多失败的开头。有时又开头不错，进行的却不顺利，然后突然我又能写下去了。状态不稳定。有一次我正在写，我写得非常快。虚构会自我完善。你必须让自己投入进去。开始的时候人会很迟钝。你必须在后面给自己很多刺激。 采访者 你的作品有很多稿，那是你妻子打的吗？ 普里切特 是的，如果她不给我打，我的工作就会停顿。如果我检查一遍并且换了一个好想法，她必须再重打一遍。 采访者 你一直坚持每天工作吗？ 普里切特 一周七天。主要原因是新闻业要求你这样。周日你必须工作，这才构成一周。这把你变得和别人不同。你也找不到关于一周中间某天休息的法律。而且你会发现写作需要很长的时间。我写了很多天。我昨天没有写。我想我尝度写写前天。我觉得如果一个人没有太多东西要说写作不是好事。我从不在缺乏支配性想法和感觉之前写篇小说。 采访者 创作一篇小说的想法从哪儿来的？ 普里切特 通常是从我遇到的人那里得到的。我第一个故事被称赞的故事是《幽默场景》。它来自于恩内斯凯尔（Eniskille），爱尔兰的一个小地方。我在常去的酒吧遇到一个涛涛不绝的驴友（commercial traveler），有趣的是他有一部小汽，但那不是一部普通的车，而是一部灵车。它来自于他的女友，一个殡葬人的女儿，他就开着这部车四处转。但是我并不一定写关于这个人的故事；只是它会给我一些想法。 采访者 你是否也有空闲期，当你没有关于小说的创意的情况下？你对此忧虑吗？ 普里切特 不，我一点不担心，因为我常常有事做——一篇评论或其它的。我有一大叠“失败之作”——故事还没有开发。我保存着它们，思考着，世事难料。举一个例子，我写了一个发生在柯莫湖（Lake Como）的故事。我从湖展开想象并开始写它和它的美丽，但是这当然写不出来故事。于是，我就把它们放弃了。 采访者 你写故事前，是否知道要去哪儿以及到哪儿结束？ 普里切特 不一定。开始只是自发的，直到你对角色熟悉起来并且想他所想。我以前写过一个盲人的故事。我想我必须去寻找做盲人的感觉。我闭上眼，体验失明的意义，如此如此……这篇叫《盲人的爱情》（Blind Love）。 采访者 你现在还在写故事吗？ 普里切特 我有一个故事正在进行之中。我写得太冗长了。某个场景我试图把事情处理得非常简捷。我写过一个从没出版的故事《居家男人》（A Family Man）。关于一个女孩和一个非常诚实的艺术家。突然有人在暴风雨之夜敲她的门。一位夫人进来并且指责她与自己的丈夫睡觉——她确实做过。这个女孩 变得非常兴奋并且给出断然的拒绝，并且依据这个拒绝来说服了这位夫人。她进而虚构了一位父亲。那夫人说，这样的话，他住在哪个房间？女孩说，我的父亲，请别打扰他。 他想喝杯茶吗？ 稍等，我去看看。 他当然不在那儿！没人在哪儿。 他可能出去转了一小圈。 哦，你要盯紧他，夫人说。 她们立刻合解了。 采访者 你能给年轻作家什么建议吗？ 普里切特 就是去写。写，写，写。我觉得一个好主意是写一点——只写两行，不用多，或者三行关于一个人物的想法的。不要写太多，如果你写太多，你就要担心对它的扼杀。 采访者 你在别的地方说过，年轻作家的一个困难是：知晓你要写的一切。而且工作时，你关于过去某事的意识会击中新想法中的隧石。你一直坚持这种感觉吗？ 普里切特 不常如此，奇怪的是我写了一个非常好的故事来自于两三年前经历。它的产生仅仅是因为我想起了一位坐在通往乡村的火车站（把孩子们从学校送回家）的小学生。他非常胖、贪吃、正在吃巧克力。所有的男孩都想从他那抢巧克力。一会儿出现了一个场景。他们打了起来，有人把他的帽子扔到了铁轨上。我想，上帝啊，这是一个非常棒的突发事件，我会用上它，但是我必须把它用在完全不同的故事里。 采访者 是在多久之前你遇到的这个男孩？ 普里切特 哦，四年，或五年。 采访者 有一个说法是我们在生活处于循环之中；有一个青年期的青年人，有一个中年期的青年，以及一个老年期的青年，过了青年是中年，如此如此。你现在处于什么时期？ 普里切特 我想我处于半疯狂状态，你明白吧。我感觉我现在越来越迟钝了。 采访者 分界难以确定吗？ 普里切特 是的，我非常老了。各方面来说，我九十岁了。我对九十岁也有忧虑。我把自己的信心建立在伯特兰德·罗素身上，我能记得与他九十岁时的会面。我想，这非常好，如果我也能这样就不必担心了。

译/张旋 最初被当作家庭主妇写的家庭生活且了无生趣，无可挑剔的完美性把加拿大人推上文学明星的舞台 艾丽丝·门罗已被授于诺贝尔文学奖，她是第十三位女性获得者。这是授于一流作家振奋人心的大奖：门罗一直为北美和英国所熟悉，但诺贝尔将制造世界性的焦点，不仅是女性写作和加拿大人写作，主要还是短篇小说，门罗执意去写这一曾被长期忽视的体裁。 每次诺贝尔奖发布时，大量媒体消息将从天而降——就像成袋的卡片倾倒向那个奇境中的艾丽丝（刘易斯·卡罗尔小说里的主角）——而不仅仅是那获奖者，突然之间受公众注目的国际要闻被点亮，就像小偷被探照灯锁定，但其他那些作家则理解这一选择。一条引语，一个小回忆，一个评价！解释它！为什以是她？他们大声喧闹。 门罗自己不愿就此多说：加拿大人不鼓励吹嘘——看门罗的故事，《你以为你是谁？》——因而有可能被浪费很多时间关进在脸谱化的小屋里。 我们都要有点伪装，我们作家们；特别是我们加拿大作家，更别说是我们加拿大较早一代的女作家们。“艺术是一种逃避，”加拿大人马绍尔·麦克卢汉曾说，而且我提请读者数一数门罗的故事中有多少谋杀者被捉住。（回答是：一个也没有。）门罗理解虚构写作与暗地里抢劫一样愉悦和恐惧：要极其细致地策划，一旦被发现怎么办？ 回到1950~1960年代，门罗开始写作的时期，当时有一种意识，不仅是对女性作家也对加拿大人，都要被当作越界和违则。 门罗发现自己被归类为“那类主妇”，而且被说成她的主题太“家庭化”，无趣。一个男作家说她写了精采的故事，但是他并不想和她睡觉。“没人邀请他，”门罗辛辣地说。每当一个作家出现在门罗的故事里，他们就有点矫情做作，或者被人利用；或者被周围的人追着问为何没有名气，或者——女性则更坏——为什么她们不能看上去漂亮点。 诺贝尔之路对门罗来说不容易：一个文学明星从她的世界中冒出来的机率之前一直是零。她生于1931年，我们经历大萧条时是个孩子，经历第二次大战则十来岁。在西南安大略，这一地区也产生了罗伯逊·戴维斯（Robertson Davies）, 格莱厄姆·吉布森（Graeme Gibson） ，詹姆斯·雷尼（ James Reaney），以及 玛丽安·恩格尔（Marian Engel），等很多作家。 她的故事特色常常被评介为小镇风情——爱管闲事的，势利的，古怪的，强求一致的，野心将受嘲笑的，尤其是文艺方面。 处境束缚形成的压力会产生解放自己的决断力，且获得某种超能量；一旦你想去做，你就要做好。否则他们取笑你，将比取笑从前那个想来个三周跳却后背着地的花样滑冰选手还卖力。 羞愧和尴尬驱使着门罗的角色，就像完美主义写作驱策着她：干下去，干好它，哪怕是不可能的那些。门罗的失败记录远大于她的成功记录，因为作家的工作就是由失败组建的。在这里她则是浪漫主义者：梦想的微光一直存在，只是你不能抓住它，如果你公开地垂涎它，那些食杂店里的人就会把你看成一个疯子。 另一方面说，门罗是我们典型的加拿大人。面对诺贝尔奖时她将非常谦逊，她不会换上一个骄傲自负的脑袋。而我们其它人，在这一华丽场合中，也将帮她这样做。 ———————————————————————— 原文来自译言网

张旋/译 E.M.福斯特是一个成功的小说家而后成为一个学者。他有三部小说《看得见风景的房间》（1908），《霍华德庄园》（1910）和《印度之旅》（1924）被改编成电影。 1927年他受邀进行的一系列演讲后来得以出版名之《小说面面观》。对现代读者来说福斯特的观点可能受其时代所限。当他开始分享其思想时，讨论电影还很新鲜，而且很多二十世纪领潮小说家和戏剧家正在崛起。特别是最近，随着1980~1990年代详尽论述故事叙述技巧的手册的出现，他的观点看起来有点肤浅。 但是他对故事叙述基础所作的观察是最早的。他在故事和情节之间给出清晰的辨别，而且强调人物和事件之间的联系。他对想象力、预见力和节奏韵律的讨论启示我们真正伟大的写作超越了故事叙述。 故事 一个故事就是对按时间流安排的事件序列的叙述——简单地说就是有什么发生和基于什么顺序。这个时间流将随机事件的集合变成故事的内容。但时序只是一个原始特征且只有一个价值：就是让听众想知道接下来会发生什么。叙事者唯一的技巧来自于他们挥舞武器制造悬念的能力，使听众渴望看到解决悬念的事件。 这里强调汇编的时序与现实生活不一样。我们真实的生活也通过时间呈现出来，但是那些更有价值和意义的经验会增加其质感。价值观在故事里是没有地位的，在那里时间与生活的联系比价值观更重要。而且因为衡量人们由时光组成的生活只不过就是累积变老的感觉，而且一个故事除了坟墓之外不能真正地抵达任何别的结局。 小说的基础是故事——叙述事件发生的顺序——但是一个故事并不足以产生伟大的小说。《战争与和平》之所以达到的成就在于它用简单的编年体叙述方式使空间和时间一样趋于无限，以及那尽量让我们惊叹的空间感也使我们愉悦，并在其背后制造出类似于音乐的效果。当一个人读了一点《战争与和平》，伟大的和弦就开始奏响，我们却不能准确地说出是什么在演奏它们。它们来自俄罗斯辽阔的国土，遍及一切时代和散布在所有大桥和冰冷的河流、森林、大路、花园、田野间的人们，正是他们在我们的阅读中积累了庄严和宏亮的声音。 人物 一个小说家仅能通过推动故事中角色的发展去探测人类经验的价值。但是福斯特强调角色不是现实的人；只是和人很像。角色的生活不同于现实生活，而且像睡觉和吃饭这样普通的行为在小说中只占很少篇幅，爱情却出现的过于频繁。有时候角色会比我们周围的人更真实，这是因为小说家擅于揭示角色隐秘的生活。在日常生活中，我们并不理解彼此，一方面是没有完善的洞察力另一方面也没有完全坦露的事实。但是读者能完全理解一部小说里的人，假如小说家有此意愿；他们内在的生活将与外在的生活一样被展现。我们不理解彼此，除非是在一个肤浅和老套的层面上；我们不会揭示自己，直到我们想那样做；我们所说的私密只是一个简便的说词；完备的知识只是一个幻觉。但是在小说里我们可以完全理解人物。 就是这种完备性使角色凭空建立现实感，而且当角色在书中逼真地展现，就会给我们一个确定无疑的印象：当一个小说家无所不知时那就是真的。他也许不会说出他知道的一切，他会给我们那种感觉，尽管角色没有坦陈出来，但他能够解释。 福斯特区分了扁平角色和圆形角色。一个扁平的角色能够通过一句话表达出来，比如：“我绝不会抛弃米考伯先生。”这里有个米考伯夫人——她说她不会抛弃米考伯先生；她不会去做，而且她就是这样做了。这个角色很容易认识一旦被引见，此后也很容易记住，她们的可忆性会长久地引起我们的思念。在喜剧里他们是最好的。一个严肃的或悲剧性的扁平人物有可能变得令人厌烦。 狄更斯写的扁平角色非常高明。几乎每一个人都能用一句话概括，而且在那人性深处还蕴含一种奇妙的感觉。有可能狄更斯强大的意志赋予他的角色一些共鸣，他们借用了他的生活和外形来引导自己。这是一个魔术。狄更斯的一部分天才在于他能运用典型和漫画手法，重塑那些我们瞬间认识的人，以求达到既避免机械化效果，又形成一个不那么肤浅的人性印象。 一个圆形角色相对来讲在人性上有更大的幅度，依据事件的需要逐渐揭示出来。一个扁平角色的行为从不会引起我们的惊奇，但是一个圆形角色会从某个自然而然的点上出奇不意地使我们惊奇；检验一个圆形角色的方法就是看他是否能用一个令人信服的方式产生惊奇。尽管事件并不需要角色去展现自己，无论如何他们具有这样的能力。简·奥斯汀的所有角色都在为一个开拓了的生活作准备，这个由小说策划的生活很少由他们主导，这也是他们能把其实际生活引向圆满的原因。 回顾十八、十九世纪小说的创作技巧——人不同的章节和所有不同的角色方面说——福斯特相信改变观点的意义，不会比作家迫使读者信服其叙述的力量并创作一个合格的混合性角色更重要。 情节 我们把一个在其时间流中可叙述的事件序列称为一个故事。一个情节也是一个可叙述的事件群，重点在于因果关系。“国王死了之后王后也死了，”就是一个故事。“国王死了，王后则死于悲伤，”就只是一个情节。时间流被封存了，因果关系遮蔽了它。针对王后之死。如果在故事中我们会说“然后呢？”在情节中我们则问“为什么？” 情节需求一部分读者的智力和记性，去记住偶然事件并在它们之间创建联系。这要求小说家延宕其解释并把人性的神秘引入叙述。神秘性是情节的基础，缺乏理解则不被欣赏，一部分思想必须被隐藏，酝酿，而另一部分则在运作之中。 因果关系也与情节中的角色有关联。偶然事件激发了角色，而且发生的事迫使角色发生改变。人物和事件连接更紧密。它们之间的平衡性有时不容易达到，因为角色，真诚的说，需要平稳的推进，但是情节需要产生惊奇。角色必须自然而然地改变，如果依据命运发生大逆转，那我们对其真实性的感觉就会变弱。 想象力和预见力 关于小说的通常论调是想象力一旦得以发挥就能产生特别的效果。想象力提供超自然的力量，但是它不比一个呈现整个事件奇异性的简单暗示更强。日常生活的内容将在各种不同的方向上拖动和拉紧，地球也会被赋予小的颠覆性恶作剧或者沉思。 福斯特的讨论中也包括模仿和改编前人著作形式中发挥的想象力，它们使那些作家的想象力得以飞扬。模仿或改编对某些小说家来说非常重要，特别是那些有大量的思想要说以及丰富的文学天才的人，但是他们不理解世界上那些有个性的男人和女人——换一种说法就是，他们不能轻松地创造角色。 预见力是小说家声音里的重音节。他的要点在于普遍性，或者具有普遍性的事。角色和事件在故事里都有特殊的意义，但是他们在更高层面也有共性。陀斯妥耶夫斯基的角色和处境所张显的常常不止于它们自己；无穷性拓展着他们（的意义）。 和象征主义者不同，那里角色和事件显现出确定的意义。实际上预见力是关于那些连接着我们和人类历史的神秘、不明确的意味。这并不是蒙昧，也不是寓言。这是一个普通的虚构世界，只是回归原始。麦尔维尔——在那种粗糙的现实主义——直接回归到一个普遍性的，我们无法辨别荣耀的黑暗和疯狂境界中。 模式和韵律 当一个小说（结构）具有的几何形式就说它有一个模式，一个角色社会地位的堕落与另一个角色社会地位上升交换就像一个沙漏，或者一个角色从一个新近接交的圈子迈到另一个直到最后回到起点这样的环形。模式是小说的美学话题，而且由小说的所有元素来滋养——所有的色角、场景、词语——它吸收到大部分营养的还是来自于情节。无论如何，故事向我们好奇心显示，情节则显示给我们的智力，模式显示给我们的美学直觉，它使我们把一本书理解为一个整体。 但是强加给角色某种模式，不如让情节有机地推动，因为小说丢弃了生活提供的极其丰富的材料。大多数小说读者从模式中获得的感觉不足以抵偿其造成的牺牲，而且他们会下结论：“干得漂亮，但不值得做。” 韵律从另一方面说像音乐的主题，它以细微的波动呈现并帮助小说形成统一。每一个主题都有自己的生命，与其受众的生活没有关系。有点类似于一个行动家，但也不全像，这里的“不全”意思是它们的力量是内在的，并且朝着把书本缝合成一体的结果努力。 一个主题的展现不是一个虚构的模式，而且对我来说，在小说里制造韵律，有时没有意义有时又被忘记了；不是所有的情况下都像一个模式，但是以美化的目的，或想以惊奇、新鲜和希望来左右我们的情况除外。我怀疑那些提前制定写作计划的作家会取得成功，制造一个正确的间断必须依据内在的推动力。除非这种效果可以精中求精，不需要破坏角色就能得到，而且降低外在形式对我们的束缚。 ———————————————————————————————— 译言

T·S·艾略特：叶芝：诗与诗剧 王恩衷 译 在我们这个时代，每一代诗的寿命大约为 20 年。我不是说所有诗人的最佳作品都是在 20年内写的：我是说新诗派或新风格的出现大约需要这么长时间。换句话说，当一个人到了50岁的时候，他的身后是70岁的人写的一种诗，他的前面则是30岁的人写的另一种诗。这就是我目前的处境。如果我再活20年，我会看到另一种更年轻的诗派。然而，人们同叶芝的关系却不能纳入这种格式。我年轻时在美国大学里念书，刚刚开始写诗的时候，叶芝就已经是诗界巨擘了。他的早期界线很明确。我不记得他那一阶段的诗给我留下什么深刻的印象。年纪很轻的人，自己受到触动才写作，根本上还不具有批判性，而且鉴赏兴趣也不太广泛。他正在寻找导师，帮助他意识到他自己想要说的话以及那种他自己内心想要作的诗。年轻作者的欣赏口味很浓重，但较狭窄：它仅仅取决于个人的需要。我所需要的那种能教我运用自己声音的诗，在英国文学中根本就不存在，只是后来在法国文学中才找到，正因为如此，在老叶芝的诗赢得我的热情之前，年轻叶芝的诗对我几乎是不存在的；那时候——我是说从1919年起——我自己的进化过程业已完成。因而，一方面我把他视作同辈，而非前人；另一方面我也能分享年纪更轻者的感情。由于1919年以后的作品，他们开始知道并仰慕他；那时他门都还是青年人。 　　当然，对于英美更年轻的诗人，我确信他们对叶芝侍作的仰慕是完全有益的。他的风格很独特，没有被模仿的危险，他的见解很独到，不会迎合和加深他们的偏见。对他们来说，有一个还活着的毋庸置疑的伟大诗人做他们景仰的对象，无疑很有好处，他的风格，他们不会受惑去模仿；他的观点和他们中流行的相违悖。在他们的作品中，你只能偶而见到他的影响的痕迹，尽管如此，他那一阶段的作品，以及作为诗人的叶芝，对他们仍具有最重大的意义。这似乎同我说的关于年轻诗人仰慕叶芝的诗的话有些矛盾。但事实上，我所说的是一种不同寻常的情况。如果叶芝不是一个伟大的诗人，他就不可能产生如此大的影响；但是，我所说的这种影响来自诗人本身的形象和他热烈追求自己的艺术和技艺的诚意。这些东西为他非同寻常的发展提供了动力。他去伦敦时总喜欢和年纪较轻的诗人相会交谈。人们有时说他傲慢自大，盛气凌人。而我从没有这样的感觉；我总感到，同比他年轻的作者谈话时，他像是对同行或从事同一神秘事业的人那样，平等相待。我想，这是因为他和许多作家不同，关心诗更甚于关心他自己作为诗人的名声或者作为诗人的形象。艺术比艺术家更伟大：他给别人这样的感觉；这也就是年轻人和他在一起从不感到踌躇的原因。 　　我相信，这就是他在成为无可置疑的大师之后还能保持不落伍的奥秘之一。另外一个奥秘就是我刚才提到的那种持续不断的发展。这几乎已成了评论他作品的老调子。但是，虽然人们经常提及它，其原因和性质却很少有人分析过。原因之一当然是专心和勤劳。而在这后面的则是性格：我指的是艺术家作为艺术家的特殊性格——也就是说，是那么一种性格的力量，它能使狄更斯在用竭早期灵感进入中年之后，还能着手著写《荒凉山庄》这样一部跟他早期作品迥然相异的杰作。泛论写作方法既困难又不明智，这么多人，这么多方法，但我的经验是，人到中年有三种选择：要么完全停止写作，要么重复昔日的自己（也许写作技巧会不断地提高），要么想法找到一种不同的工作方法，使自己适应中年。为什么人们大多不再读勃朗宁和史文朋的晚期长诗了呢、我想这是因为人们只要读他们的早期作品就能得其全部精华的缘故，而读他们的晚期诗作时，人们总想起其中所匾乏的而早期作品所具有的那种清新感，同时却看不到可资弥补的新品质。当一个人进行抽象思维活动时——假设确有这样一种存在于数学和物理科学之外的纯粹的抽象思维——他的思维能力可以成熟，但他的情感也许会保持不变，甚至还会倒退，但这无关紧要。然而，如果一个人作为诗人成熟了，这意味着他作为一个完整的人成熟了，他能体验同其年龄相称的新情感，而且像往日里体验青春情感一样强烈。 　　有一种完善的发展形式，也就是莎士比亚的那种。莎士比亚属于这样一类为数不多的诗人：他们成熟时期的作品就如同他们早期的作品一样令人兴奋。我想，莎士比亚的发展情况和叶芝的发展情况不大相同；正是这一不同使后者显得更加神奇。在莎士比亚身上，人们可以看到诗艺缓慢而连续的发展。他的早期作品似乎已经暗示出中年诗歌的情况。只要读一下他的某篇作品，你就会说：“这部作品完美地表现了他发展过程中那一个阶段的感性。”如果到了中年，一个诗人仍能发展，或仍有新东西可说，而且和以往说得一样好，这里面总有些不可思议的东西。但同莎士比亚相比，我感到叶芝的发展情况似乎有些不同。我无意造成这样的印象：似乎我把他的早期和晚期作品看成出自两个不同的人之手。如果在熟悉了他的晚期作品之后，再回头看一下他的早期作品，人们就会看到，在技巧方面，同一种媒介和风格在缓但不间息地发展着。当我说发展时，我并不是说他早期的许多作品——尽管它们确有不足之处——写得不美。有些作品，例如《谁与弗格斯同行？》， 能同我们语言中任何同类作品相媲美。不过，它们中最佳和最知名的作品都有这样的局限：它们像“选集作品”一样，孤立起来和把它们置于同时期其他作品之中，都一样令人满足。 　　显然，我用“选集作品”一词时有其特殊的含义。在所有的选集中，你都能看到这么一种诗作，它们本身就能使你感受到彻底的满足和欢快，这时你几乎不会去关心谁是作者，也不会想到要读一读他的其他作品。而另一种作品，尽管本身不一定完美，却能使你无法抗拒地想要通过诗人的其他作品更多地了解他。自然，这种区分局限于短诗，也就是那种稍有思维力的读者略用点心就能读的诗作。读到这样的诗作，你立刻会感到，写它们的人在不同的情况下一定能说出许多同样有趣的话。如今，在叶芝所有的早期诗作中，我只能偶而在某一行中，发现那种令人兴奋、急切地想进一步了解作者思想、感情的独特个性。叶芝很少表现自己强烈的情感经验。 　　我们可以证明他青年时期的经验极为强烈，但我们的证据却是在他那些回顾往事的后期作品中找到的。 　　我曾在早先的一些论文中，称颂过我所谓艺术中的非个性化的东西。现在我却认为，叶芝后期作品之所以更成功的原因就是其中个性得到了更大程度的表现。乍看起来，我似乎自相矛盾了。也许是我表达得太糟，或是对这一观念认识得还不够成熟——我从来不愿重读自己的散文作品，所以我希望不要再深究其原因——但我认为至少这事的真情如下所述。有两种非个性化：其中一种只要是熟练的匠人就会具有，另一种则只有不断成熟的艺术家才能逐步取得。前者是我称之为“选集作品”的非个性化，这样的作品有洛夫莱斯或萨克林的抒情诗，或者比这两位诗人都好的坎皮恩的作品等。后者是这样一些诗人的非个性化：他们能用强烈的个人经验，表达一种普遍真理；并保持其经验的独特性，目的是使之成为一个普遍的象征。令人惊讶的是，叶芝在已经是第一类中的伟大匠人之后，又成了第二类中的伟大诗人。这不是因为他变成了另外一个人，这样说的理由是，正如我所暗示的那样，人们确信他已经经历了青年时期强烈的情感——确实，如果没有早期的经验，他绝写不出后期作品中那些充满智慧的东西。但是，他不得不等待一个晚来的成熟，以表达早期的经验；我想这使得他成了一位独特而富有魅力的诗人。我们来看一下所有的选集都收的他的早期作品：《当你老了》；或1893年同一卷中所收的《死亡之梦》。这些都是很美的诗作，但仅仅是匠人的作品，因为诗中人们感觉不到那种为普遍真理提供材料的独特性。到1904年卷的时候，在一首非常可爱的诗作《被安抚的愚人》以及《亚当的咒语》中，人们已经可以看到一些进展了。某样东西取得了突破，他在开始作为一个独特的人说话的同时，开始为人类说话了。这一点在诗作《和平》中（1910年卷）表现得更加清楚。但是，直到1914年他的那部异常剧烈的书信体献词诗集《责任》出版，它才在其中两行伟大的诗句里得到了彻底的体现： 原谅它吧，为了光秃秃的痴情， 虽然我已临近四十九了…… 　　诗中讲出了他的年龄，这很重要。花了大半生的时间才得以如此坦率地说话。 这是一个了不起的胜利。 　　叶芝尚有许多自我突破的余地，甚至在技巧上也是如此。作为一批诗人中较年轻的一员，在一定时期内风格的发展可能会受到阻碍。当然，这些诗人中没有一个具有他那样的重要性，但在他们自己有限的道路上获得了进一步的发展。再者，前拉裴尔派声望对他的压力也很巨大。凯尔特黄昏的叶芝——在我看来更像前拉裴尔派黄昏的叶芝——利用凯尔待民间传说几乎就像威廉•莫里斯利用斯堪的纳维亚民间传说一样。他的叙事长诗带有莫里斯影响的痕迹。确实，在前拉裴尔时期，叶芝决非这一流派中最不重要的一个。我不一定对，但我还是认为剧作《阴影下的水域》最完美地表现了那一派朦胧诱人的美丽。它使我震动——也许我离题了——就像通过肯辛顿一幢房子的后窗描写出来的西部海域；像一个凯尔姆司各特出版社偏爱的爱尔兰神话一样；当我想象剧中人物的形象时，他们的眼睛迷茫如梦，就像彭恩•琼斯画中的骑士、淑女的眼睛。我认为他像罗塞蒂或莫里斯那样处理爱尔兰传奇的时期是一个混乱的时期。直到他用传奇作工具来创造自己的人物时，他才掌握了它——不，事实上是在他开始写作《舞蹈者的剧》的时候。 　　关键是在表现方法上而不是在题材上变得更加爱尔兰化的同时，他变得更加具有普遍性了。关于叶芝的发展，我特别希望指出两点。第一（就这一点我已经谈了一些看法），能够取得叶芝在中年和晚年所作出的成就，是我称之为艺术家性格的伟大、永恒的榜样——未来的诗人应该满怀崇敬的心情学习这一榜样。艺术家的性格是一种道德和智慧上的卓越不凡。第二，在我批评了他的早期作品缺乏完整的情感之后，我们很自然就会得出这样的结论：叶芝主要是一个中年诗人。我这话绝非说他只是一个中年读者的诗人：全世界用英语创作的年轻诗人对他的态度就足以说明事实恰好相反。在理论上，没有理由认为一个诗人到了中年或者在耄耋之前的任何时候会丧失其灵感和材料。因为，一个有能力体验生活的人，在一生中的不同阶段，会发现自己处身于不同的世界；由于他用不同的眼睛去观察，他的艺术材料就会不断地更新。但事实上，只有很少几个诗人才有能力适应岁月的变嬗。确实，需要一种超常的诚实和勇气才能面对这一变化。大多数人要么死死抓住青年时期的经历——所以他们的作品就成了早期作品毫无真情的仿制品——要么干脆抛弃激情，只用头脑写作，浪费空洞的写作技巧。还有一种甚至更坏的诱惑：爱尊荣，成了只在公众中才能显示其存在的公众人物——挂着勋章和荣誉的衣帽架，行为、言论，甚至思想、感受都是按照他们以为公众是那样期待于他们的去做。叶芝不是这样的诗人：或许这就是年轻人更能接受他的晚期诗作的原因，相比之下，年纪更大的人就不能这样轻易地接受了。因为在年轻人眼里他是这么一个诗人：他的作品保持了最好意义上的青春，甚至在某种意义上，到了晚年他反而变得年轻了。但是，对于老年人来说，除非他们在诗中看到自己，并为其中的诚实所感动，否则对如此坦率地表露人到底是并且依然是何物，会感到大为震惊的。他们会拒绝相信他们就是像那样。 你认为这太可怕，情欲和暴怒， 侍候着我的暮年，翩翩起舞； 我年轻时它们并不是这样的瘟病： 我还有什么能激奋我纵声高歌？ 这几行诗很感人，但不太令人愉快，其中的感伤成份最近受到一位我一向敬重的英国评论家的批评。但是我认为他误读了它们。我把它们当作一种个人仟悔来读，但仟悔者不是一个与众不同的人，而是一个在根本上和大多数人相同的人；唯一的区别是他比别人更明了、更诚实、更有生气。哪一位诚实的人，即使相当老了，能够完全摆脱这种感伤呢？它们可能会被宗教压抑和规制，但谁又能说他们已经死去？除了那些在他们身上拉•罗什福科的箴言正好适用的人：“当邪恶离开我们时，我们却自以为是我们离开了它们”。叶芝这首警句式短诗的悲剧性完全在最后一行中。同样，剧作《炼狱》也不太令人愉快。对它的某些方面我自己也并不喜欢。我希望他用的不是这个标题，因为我不能接受这样一个炼狱：它一点也没有暗示，至少没有强调洗炼罪孽。但除了作者利用杰出的戏剧技巧，把许多动作置于极短而且很少移动的场景中，这部剧还出色地表现了老年人的情感。我感到，在戏剧意义上，我刚才所引的短诗和剧作《炼狱》一样，富有教益。抒情诗人——而叶芝就是抒情诗人，甚至在他创作诗剧时——能为每个人说话，甚至能为那些与他自己迥然相异的人说话；为了做到这一点，他必须有能力在某一时刻使自己成为每一个人或其他人；正是他在想象中能做到这一点的能力，使一些读者误以为他只是在为自己说话，并且说的也只是自己——特别是当他们不愿意其中暗示的就是他们的时候。 　　我无意只强调叶芝诗作的年龄问题。我想请大家注意一下这首收在《旋梯及其他》中，为纪念伊娃•郭尔-布恩和康马凯维奇而作的美丽的诗篇。 诗的开首是这么一幅图画： 两个少女身着和服， 都很美丽，一个像只瞪羚， 紧跟着的一行令人感到震惊，从而加强了画面的效果： 当萎谢，衰老，枯骨也变得憔悴时， 再请注意一下《柯尔庄园》，开头几行是： 我沉思着燕子的飞翔， 沉思着老姬和她的房子。 在这样的诗中，人们感到青春时期最富生机、最令人向往的情感得到了保存，并在回顾往事时恰当完整地表达了出来。因为老人能引起人们兴趣的情绪并不仅仅是变化了的情绪；他们本身就贮满了青春时期的情绪。 　　叶芝在诗剧方面的发展和他在抒情诗方面的发展一样有趣。我曾说过他是抒情诗人——在一种我不会认为像我这样的人是的意义上；我是指某种对情感的选择，而不是指某种特定的格律形式。但是没有理由认为一个抒情诗人不能成为一个戏剧诗人。在我眼里，叶芝就是一位抒情剧作家。他花了许多年才发展了一种适合他自己天才的戏剧形式。在他开始写剧的时候，所谓诗剧就是用无韵体写剧，现在，无韵体早已消亡了。我不想在这里探讨它死去的诸种原因：但显而易见，这种莎士比亚曾经卓越地运用过的形式有其不利的方面。如果你写的莎士比亚式的剧作，对往昔的回忆会给你带来很大的压力；如果你写的是另一种剧，感觉就会轻松些。再者，莎士比亚比他之后的那些剧作家要伟大得多，所以无韵诗几乎无法同16、17世纪的生活分割开来：但它已抓不住今日英语的节奏了。我认为，如果有什么类似规则无韵体的东西想要复兴的话，只能在很久以后才能做到，这期间它将把自己从阶段联结中解脱出来。在叶芝写作早期戏剧的时候，他不可能用其他形式来写诗剧，这并非对叶芝本人的批评，而是断言韵文形式的变化发生在某一时刻，而不是任何其他时刻。他早期的诗剧，包括每行十四音节的杂韵剧《绿头盔》， 都写得很美，至少是那个时代最优秀的戏剧。 　　甚至在这些剧中，人们也可以看到叶芝的不规则的韵律有了一定的发展。叶芝并没有创造出一种韵律，但他晚期剧作中的无韵体非常接近一种新的韵律；但令人吃惊的是：叶芝在《炼狱》一剧中实际上放弃了无韵体格律。他晚期写剧时运用得很成功的一个手法就是抒情合唱幕间剧。但是他能够取得进步的另一个——而且是很重要的——原因是对诗化装饰物的逐渐摈弃。就作诗而论，这或许是一个试图写诗剧的现代诗人最艰苦的工作。改进的方向是使作品越来越单纯。对熟练掌握舞台技巧的诗人来说，美丽的诗句本身就是一种危险的奢侈品。所需要的不是一行或孤立一段的美，而是织进剧本肌质本身的美；它使你几乎分不清是诗句使剧作变得宏伟，还是剧作使言语变成了诗。《李尔王》中最具有刺激性的句子之一非常简单： 决不，决不，决不，决不，决不 但如果不知道上下文，你怎能说这是诗，甚至连合格的韵文都称不上。叶芝对韵文的净化在四卷《舞蹈者的剧》和身后出版的两卷中变得更明了了。事实上，就是在这些作品中他最终找到了适宜自己的戏剧形式。 　　正是在《舞蹈者的剧》的前三卷中，他使用了内在（和外在相反）的方法来处理我曾提及的爱尔兰神话。我感到他早期描写传奇英雄的戏剧和他早期的诗作一样，以我们对待传奇的崇敬心情将人物处理成来自另外一个世界的造物。在晚期剧中他们成了带有普遍性的男人和女人。也许我不该把《骨头的梦》归入此类，因为德莫特和德沃基拉是现代历史人物，而不是史前人物；我想重申我一贯的观点：该剧的这两位恋人具有但丁笔下的巴奥罗和弗兰西斯加那样的普遍性。年轻的叶芝不可能赋予他们这一品质。《鹰井》中的卡丘兰，以及《埃默唯一的嫉妒》中的卡丘兰、埃默和爱思尼，也是同样的情况；神话的出现不是为了自身，它是工具，用来制造带普遍意义的场景。此刻，我感到或许我已经造成一种与我的愿望和信仰相悖的印象，即我们可以偏爱叶芝的晚期作品，而忽视他的早期诗作和戏剧，你不能这样断然分割一个伟大诗人的作品。叶芝的作品中有一种延续的积极个性和简单意愿；因而，没有对他早期作品的研究和鉴赏，就不能理解或不能真正地欣赏他的晚期作品；而晚期作品又反过来帮助我们理解他的早期作品，使我们看见过去未曾注意到的美和重要意义。我们还得考虑历史条件。正如我说过的那样，叶芝出生在一个文学运动的末期，而且这场运动还是英国的运动。只有苦修语言的人才会知道需要多少不懈的努力才能摆脱那些影响——不过另一方面，我们一旦熟悉了更老的声音，我们甚至能听出它在最早出版的韵文中的独特音调。我自己年轻时，似乎没有一个很强大的诗派直接帮助或妨碍过我的发展，我也无须学习或抵制他们。但我也能理解情况不同者的苦处和他们肩上任务的沉重。而在戏剧方面，情况正好相反，叶芝一无所有，所以我们才有了叶芝。他开始戏剧创作的时候，描写当代生活的散文剧虽然前途未卜，但似乎很流行；轻松的滑稽戏剧反映都市某些特权阶层的生活，而严肃的剧作处理的往往是某一暂时的社会问题，因而转瞬就为人们所遗忘。现在，我们可以看到，甚至叶芝早期不完善的尝试都可能比肖伯纳的剧作具有更持久的文学价值；他的剧作作为一个整体可能更有力地抵制了走红的夏夫茨伯里大街的粗俗市侩气。他本人也像他的剧作一样坚决反对这种粗俗风气。就像他从一开始就使用口语，而不是书面语创作和思考诗歌那样，在戏剧方面，他总是着意写作可以演的，而不是仅仅用来读的剧作。我觉得他更加关心的是作为人民意识的喉舌的剧院，而不是作为他自己获取功名成就的工具的剧院。我确信只有以这种精神从事这项工作，才有希望取得任何有价值的东西。当然，叶芝有一些很大的优势。提一下不会损坏他的荣誉：和他一起工作的是这样的人，他们具有自然和未遭破坏的语言和表演才能。我们不可能将他为爱尔兰戏剧所作的和爱尔兰戏剧为他所作的分割开来。他利用这一优势，使诗剧的观念在遍遭不幸的时候保持着活力。我不知道剧作家叶芝对我们的影响面有多广——就时间论，我们将永远负他的债，直到戏剧消亡之日。在他偶而写的有关戏剧的论文中，他曾指出一些我们必须牢记的原则：例如诗人先于演员，演员先于幕景画家；剧院在无需只考虑俄国狭义的“人民”的同时，必须是面向人民的；戏剧如企望永恒必须写根本的情景。出生于一个普遍信奉“为艺术而艺术”的世界，又成长于一个要求艺术为社会目的服务的世界，他却坚持两者之间的正确观点，这种观点绝不是这两者间的一种妥协。他的行为表明一个艺术家在完全诚实地追求他的艺术的同时，也为他的国家和世界做着力所能及的贡献。 　　赞誉某人，无须完全同意他的观点；我不隐瞒自己对叶芝思想和感情的某些方面不能苟同的态度。我这样说只是想表明我的批评的界线。分歧、反对和相抗等问题出在信条方面，这些都是关键问题。我只是在允许的情况下孤立地考察了作为诗人和剧作家的叶芝。从长远的观点来看，两者不能被完全孤立。总有一天，我们必须对叶芝的全部著作做一完整、细致的研究；也许，这需要再过些时间。如果只想得到经验和愉快，有些诗人的诗多少可以孤立起来读。而另一些诗人，虽也传达经验和愉快，但具有更大的历史意义。叶芝属于后一类：他们为数不多，但他们的历史就是他们所处的时代的历史，他们是时代意识的一部分，没有他们就无从理解那个时代。这么说给了他极高的地位，但我相信这地位是牢固的。 转自：http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_7e3e2dfc0100stbz.html

Child of the Century 《世纪之子》 JUNE 13, 1991 未译， William Trevor 威廉·特雷弗 Complete Collected Stories by V.S. Pritchett Random House, 1,219 pp., $35.00 “I have before me two photographs,” V.S. Pritchett has written. “One is, I regret, instantly recognizable: a bald man, sitting before a pastry board propped on a table, and writing. He does little else besides sit and write. His fattish face is supported by a valence of chins; the head is held together by glasses that slip down a bridgeless nose….” The second image is a picture taken fifty years before: a “young fellow sitting on the table of a photographer’s in Paris, a thin youth of twenty with thick fairish hair, exclaiming eyebrows, loosely grinning mouth and the eyes raised to the ceiling with a look of passing schoolboy saintliness…. The young one is shy, careless, very pleased with himself, putting on some impromptu act; the older one is perplexed. The two if they could meet in the flesh, would be stupefied and the older one would certainly be embarrassed.” A lifetime of transformation has occurred between that past and present. The young Victor Pritchett, destined for the leather trade and English suburbia, has just freed himself from that fate. In Paris he sold shellac and glue. His vague ambition was to write, but some instinct informed him that first it was necessary to become a foreigner. “For myself that is what a writer is—a man living on the other side of a frontier.” The older man is Sir Victor Pritchett, essayist and novelist and storyteller, the prophet returned to his own country, the traveler come in from the cold, Grand Old Man of English letters. In the years that separate the two there has been, not just a lot of writing, but a great deal of questioning and cogitation, of dwelling upon the art of fiction, of relating—in case it can possibly be done—the writer and the person: One knows who one is; in childish egotism, one supposed people have a relationship only with oneself. But after the age of twenty, the frame is uncertain, change is hard to pin down, one is less and less sure of who one is, and other egos with their court of adherents invade one’s privacy with theirs. One’s freedom is inhibited by their natural insistence on themselves; also, the professional writer who spends his time becoming other people and places, real or imaginary, finds he has written his life away and has become almost nothing. The fiction writer, the old man decides in the end, is “at the very least, two persons. He is the prosaic man at his desk and a sort of valet who dogs him and does the living.” At first he is all valet, the alter ego no more than a wish or a dream. With literary success, the balance is reversed. Pritchett’s apprenticeship was in journalism. He wrote anecdotal sketches of real people “because the newspapers liked that kind of thing,” but he could not resist the temptation to invent. He labored at novels, eventually finding himself more attracted by concision and intensity, by glimpses that illuminated character and relationships; in the 1920s he wrote his earliest short stories. Chekhov, though no longer alive, would have been considered a near contemporary then and, as the undisputed master of the modern form, an influence that could not be avoided. The short story as we know it today belongs to our times, “a young art,” as Elizabeth Bowen put it, “a child of this century.” The antique—the told tale of the fireside—had drifted uneasily into print but, stripped of the drama supplied by the talebearer’s voice, often failed adequately to communicate. Literary development such as this has always interested Pritchett. He possesses the ability to discard the implements of the fiction writer in order to view the subject from the perspective of the academic. Not satisfied simply to accept his fascination with the “intricacy of the short form, the speed with which it can change from scene to scene,” he nags himself with analytical questions of why and how and wherefore. His instinct is to reduce possible novels to essentials, but part of that task—as he sees it—is to define the special quality of what he is left with. This is not to reassure himself that his performance is worthwhile, but suggests instead that his fiction-writer’s natural curiosity has overflowed in a particular direction. The conclusions he reaches are similar to those of another renowned practitioner in the same art, who equally liked to analyze: Frank O’Connor. “Since a whole lifetime must be crowded into a few minutes,” O’Connor wrote, “those minutes must be carefully chosen indeed and lit by an unearthly glow, one that enables us to distinguish present, past and future as though they were contemporaneous.” In Pritchett’s view a short story “tells us one thing, and one thing intensely.” It is a glancing form that “seems to be right for the nervousness and restlessness of contemporary life.” It can be likened to a painting or “even a song which we can take in all at once, yet which brings the recesses and contours of long experience to the mind.” Although they approach the matter differently, the two writers are in general agreement, but I doubt that Pritchett—more precise and detailed in his thinking—would agree with O’Connor that the storyteller must be “much more of a writer, much more of an artist” than the novelist. The adopted academic role is out of control here; Pritchett rarely is. The Complete Collected Stories is a fat volume of over twelve hundred pages, constituting more than sixty years of production. The earliest stories Pritchett wrote—those of the 1920s, some of them previously collected in The Spanish Virgin—are out of print and have been allowed to remain so on the grounds that their author had not then discovered his own distinctive voice. But by 1938, with the collection You Make Your Own Life, he was on his way. In the first story of that collection, and the first in this, a young commercial traveler courts the girl behind the reception desk of his provincial hotel: It started one Saturday. I was working new ground and I decided I’d stay at the hotel the weekend and put in an appearance at church. “All alone?” asked the girl in the cash desk. It has been raining since ten o’clock. “Mr Good has gone,” she said. “And Mr. Straker. He usually stays with us. But he’s gone.” “That’s where they make their mistake,” I said. “They think they know everything because they’ve been on the road all their lives.” “You’re a stranger here, aren’t you?” she said. “I am,” I said. “And so are you.” “How do you know that?” “Obvious,” I said. “Way you speak.” “Let’s have a light,” she said. “So’s I can see you,” I said. That was how it started. The rain was pouring down on to the glass roof of the office. The young man knows that it pays in small towns to spend the weekend, before making his business rounds on Monday morning. It pays to turn up at church, to say good morning to one congregation and good evening to another. They remember you when you spread your samples out on their counters, and the weekend gives you something to talk about. “I’m TT,” he reveals to the hotel girl over a cup of tea in her office. “Too many soakers on the road as it is.” That, also, is a selling line. Muriel her name is, known locally for her sense of humor, given to laughter. She is bored, sitting in the hotel office in her overcoat because it’s always cold there, “a smart girl with a big friendly chin and a second one coming and her forehead and nose were covered with freckles.” Colin, a mechanic in the local garage, is in love with Muriel and when a love affair with the commercial traveler begins he follows the two about on his motorbike. Their country drives are haunted by his dogged pursuit, the big red motorcycle occasionally speeding past them or cutting in dangerously at a bend. Anything can happen next. This is typical V.S. Pritchett territory. He is intimately familiar with its outward reality; he knows its mores and its emotions, and supplies a plot that doesn’t strain its limitations. The tone is colloquial, the first-person narrator given depth and idiosyncracy. On a weekend visit with Muriel to his family, comedy slips to the fore. This is a household supported by an undertaking business, which for the young man is just another commercial activity, seasonable like everything else. But for Muriel it’s a hoot, any reference to coffin sizes or hearses sending her into gusts of noisy laughter. The front-room exchanges are ordinary enough, but the presentation of this dialogue, without authorial comment, opens up a whole world of family relationships and reveals a telling glimpse of what awaits a daughter-in-law when the politeness runs its course: “How’s business with you, Mr Humphrey?” said Muriel. “We passed a large cemetery near the station.” “Dad’s Ledger,” I said. “The whole business has changed so that you wouldn’t know it, in my lifetime,” said my father. “Silver fittings have gone clean out. Restraint. Dignity,” my father said. “Prices did it,” my father said. “The war,” he said. “You couldn’t get the wood,” he said. “Take ordinary mahogany, just an ordinary piece of mahogany. Or teak,” he said. “Take teak. Or walnut.” “You can certainly see the world go by in this room,” I said to my mother. “It never stops,” she said. Colin from the garage is killed, cutting in once too often on his powerful machine—this time in front of a bus. The strands of the story, so far apparently unrelated, fall into place around this tragedy. Death hurries love up; overnight comforting turns into sex. “Ever noticed,” Muriel’s young man wonders, “how hot a woman’s breath gets when she’s crying?” The drama of a passionate motorcyclist isn’t finished yet: when he follows the lovers for the last time it is in one of the family coffins, teak or mahogany or walnut. And they are thinking, as people did in the 1930s, that chances taken with sex before marriage will probably mean marriage in the end, whether they like it or not. It’s inconvenient, it’s dampening, it’s too soon and too hurried, there’s too little in the bank: the story belongs to the boy who escaped on his motorbike. Seven years later, in the next collection, It May Never Happen, the style is just perceptibly tighter, more economical, closer to the bone. But the obsessions are the same—with what men and women do to one another, with success and failure, strength and weakness; Pritchett is fascinated by these vagaries of the human condition, and above all by the illusions of love. He is aware that pettiness and small dishonesties do not necessarily destroy nobility, and that when bluster cloaks shame and embarrassment it reveals more than it obscures. But such awareness is only a beginning; in writing fiction it must become the property of imaginary people, prompted onto the page by charged emotions or some turn of events. In “The Fly in the Ointment” a man of thirty-five visits his elderly, bankrupt father, who is keeping his end up to a degree that is almost offensive. His disguise betrays him; the truth peeps out. The relationship between the two will never be the same again, and the transformation will influence it retrospectively, its previously unquestioned attributes and assumptions caught in the beam of light adversity has cast. “Listen to me a moment. I want you to get this idea,” said his father, his warm voice going dead and rancorous and his nostrils fidgeting. His eyes went hard, too. A different man was speaking, and even a different face; the son noticed for the first time that like all big-faced men his father had two faces. There was the outer face like a soft warm and careless daub of innocent sealing wax and inside it, as if thumbed there by a seal, was a much smaller one, babyish, shrewd, scared and hard. Now this little inner face had gone greenish and pale and dozens of little veins were broken on the nose and cheeks. The small, drained, purplish lips of this little inner face were speaking. The son leaned back instinctively to get just another inch away from this little face. Stories breed in a writer, Pritchett has said, and might have added that they are often variations on a theme, yet another attempt to exorcise a still persistent obsession. Few novelists fruitfully have such second thoughts: poets and short story writers thrive on them. Some disown early versions, altering with a mass of emendations, updating colloquialisms, or generally restyling; V.S. Pritchett simply writes another story. In the eighty-two collected here no effort has been made to trim away the echoes. The half-madness that being in love induces before the passion has settled, the influence of someone’s physical characteristics on his or her personality, the potency of the unspoken statement, the sudden revelation: these sources of inspiration are repeatedly returned to. The most formal, traditional, even old-fashioned of writers, Pritchett is also a constant experimentalist. In working the same ground, the distinctive voice has developed many cadences over the years. But there remains an instantly recognizable Pritchett realm. In it young men make their way and dream of the girls they long one day to find waiting for them. The girls—in saloon bars or cafés or some relation’s house—smile prettily when they’re eventually discovered, but the next time the prettiness seems a little less. The smile is vacant, the jaw heavy, the hair lank. And Jim or Harry or Bill is not a Romeo after all. In corners of public houses middle-aged men talk about their day’s work. In shabby front rooms old women murmur from the bowels of the past. It is often, but not always, a lower-middle-class world, respectable, doing better for itself, as English as its own array of coronation mugs. There’s Cousin Gladys with her Bible class, and Aunt Annie clucking and clicking her teeth, and Mr. Seugar poking the fire in order to annoy them next door, and Mrs. Draper who makes an animal sound, “like the noise of an old dog at a bone.” Mr. Fulmino loves whatever hasn’t happened yet. Big, oblong Mr. Manningtree gets out of bed briskly every morning and longs to shout “Wakey, wakey!” at his sleeping gnat of a wife, but every morning controls himself. Mr. Hoblin uses disguised voices on the telephone. Mrs. Prosser looks like a fist. Pritchett is at his best when his cast is large and the story twenty or thirty pages long. Group portraits are presented, often of families or people connected through the work they do. In “When My Girl Comes Home” bright, buxom Hilda returns from the war, first-class on the train, her tinted hair fashionably arranged. She is better-dressed than the women who gather round a tea table to welcome her. Her marriage to Mr. Singh took her to the Far East, but Mr. Singh is dead now, and many among the family and relations who congregate in the small house in Hincham Street have believed that Hilda must be too. This long story is probably Pritchett’s finest. Hilda, with her smart luggage and her jewel case, is a queen among these people who have survived the Blitz and the deprivations of war and are struggling through an aftermath of austerity. The swollen schoolgirl has slimmed down in the shoulders and the elbows, her embrace for everyone is assured and woman-of-the-world. Four Years in Japanese Torture Camp, the newspaper headlines say, London Girl’s Ordeal. Hilda’s mother, trembling little Mrs. Johnson, never lost hope, and her tears are shed proudly now. A Mother’s Faith, another headline states. The landlord at the Lord Nelson, the butcher, anyone who met old Mrs Johnson as she walked by like a poor, decent ghost with her sewing bundles, in those last two years, all said in war-staled voices: “It’s a mother’s faith, that’s what it is. A mother’s faith is a funny thing.” She would walk along, with a cough like someone driving tacks. Her chest had sunk and under her brown coat her shoulder blades seemed to have sharpened into a single hump. Her faith gave her a bright, yet also a sly, dishonest look. The bombshell that Hilda drops is that after Mr. Singh’s death she married Shinji Kobayashi. It isn’t meant to be a bombshell. Her mother knew; and Hilda presumed the information that she’d been perfectly safe as the wife of a Japanese rather than incarcerated in a prison camp had been passed on. It wasn’t, and instead there are the newspaper headlines, a mother’s faith not at all what it had seemed to be, and everyone at sixes and sevens. These people of Hincham Street had expected a wasted figure to return to them, far more battered by war than they’d been themselves. Yet Hilda has come in glory, and at least that is understandable now. Half-truths multiply among the doilies and threadbare antimacassars. Mr. Fulmino, who always takes the lead, who should have known the facts since he invariably does, smothers his confusion in a teacup. Because everything possible must be done in the way of human duty, it was Mr. Fulmino who wrote to the War Office, the Red Cross, and the Prisoner-of-War Commission. It was Mr. Fulmino who got Hilda back. He feels more than a little foolish now. Pritchett does not go in for heroes and villains. Hilda isn’t wicked, she didn’t intentionally mislead. She has a stupid, anonymous face, and she inspires mix-ups, but that’s the height of her shortcomings. She trots out the facts of her missing years, adding in honest good measure that recently a Mr. Gloster has entered her life, and also a Mr. Faulkner—just as Mr. Singh and Shinji Kobayashi have in their time. “I don’t believe it,” Mrs. Fulmino mutters, not knowing whether or not she should. The headlines were all lies—no more, it seems, than lingering propaganda. Yet even now, with Hilda awed by what has been printed about her, and while family and relations “believed and disbelieved everything at once,” the fantasy that has taken root still lives. Finally, ordinariness is in charge again. Uneasy in Hincham Street and the cause of some friction there, Hilda is fortuitously brought low. We watched Hilda. The painted eyebrows made the grimace of her weeping horrible. There was not one of us who was not shocked. There was in all of us a sympathy we knew how to express but which was halted—as by a fascination—with the sight of her ruin. We could not help contrasting her triumphant arrival with her state at this moment. It was as if we had at last got her with us as we had, months before, expected her to be. Hilda, fortuitously again, bounces back. Chance is the guiding element in her life, as it is for so many of Pritchett’s characters. From their modest foothold on the periphery they rarely inaugurate events, and influence their own destiny only through occasional, glancing swipes. As real people do, they resist the labels of good or bad; they are decent on their day, some experiencing more of those days than others do. It is love—Pritchett’s favorite ingredient—that pins them into the scheme of things. Grimly it does so for aged, unattractive Gentleman Pliny when he marries his Camberwell beauty and keeps her by him, as he does the hoarded pieces in his antique shop. Desperately it does so for straitlaced Constance in her efforts to hold on to a useless man. It has its way with young and old, weakening them or imbuing them with their most enduring strength, tidying the pattern of their lives. These stories are a record of its capricious nature and of much besides, every page a pleasure.