旅行的艺术:动机 Ⅲ 异国情调-1

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在阿姆斯特丹斯希普霍尔机场下飞机，进入航站才几步，我就被一块天花板下悬着的指示牌吸引住了。这是一个指明通往迎宾厅、出口和签转柜台的方向指示牌，鲜亮的黄颜色，长2米，高1米。指示牌设计也简单，铝制的箱框，镶着塑料的指示牌，通过小钢柱连接，从电缆线和空调管路密布的天花板挂下来。指示牌很简单，甚至太过普通，但它却让我快乐。用“异国情调”来形容这种快乐也许有些不同寻常，却是合宜的。指示牌上有好几处显出这种异国情调，如Aankomst（荷兰文，迎宾厅）一词中的两个并置a；Uitgang（荷兰文，出口）一词中字母u和i连在一起；除了荷兰文，指示牌上还标有英文副标：用balies（荷兰文，柜台）来表述desk（英文，柜台）的意思，还采用了一些实用新潮的字体，如Frutiger体或Univers体等。

On disembarking at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, only a few steps inside the terminal, I am struck by a sign hanging from the ceiling that announces the ways to the arrivals hall, the exit and the transfer desks. It is a bright yellow sign, one metre high and two across, simple in design, a plastic fascia in an illuminated aluminum box suspended on steel struts from a ceiling webbed with cables and air-conditioning ducts. Despite its simplicity, even mundanity, the sign delights me, a delight for which the adjective 'exotic', though unusual, seems apt. The exoticism is located in particular areas: in the double a of Aankomst , in the neighbourliness of au and an i in Uitgang , in the use of English subtitles, in the word for desks, balies , and in the choice of practical modernist fonts, Frutiger or Univers.

这个指示牌之所以让我快乐，原因之一在于它是第一个肯定的见证，表明我已经到达了一个“别的地方”。它是异国的一个标志。也许对那些不太注意的人来说，这指示牌并不显眼，但在我的国家里，这类指示牌是决不会以此种形式出现的。首先，它的黄色不会如此鲜亮，上面的字体可能会柔顺些，并更多怀旧色彩；其次，它也不会考虑外国人是否会弄不清方向，不会加上其他语言的提示或副标，而且单从语言上看，指示牌上也不会出现并置的字母a，这种特别的重复，说不清为什么，让我感觉到自己正置身于另一种历史和另一类民族心态之中。

If the sign provokes such pleasure, it is in part because it offers the first conclusive evidence of having arrived elsewhere. It is a symbol of abroad. Though it may not seem distinctive to the casual eye, such a sign would never exist in precisely this form in my own country. There it would be less yellow, the typeface would be softer and more nostalgic, there would-out of greater indifference to the confusion of foreigners-probably be no subtitles and the language would contain no double a s-a repetition in which I sensed, confusedly, the presence of another history and mindset.

一个电源插座，一只浴室水龙头，一个果酱瓶，或是一个指示牌传递出的一些信息，可能连它的设计者也没有想到，譬如说，它可能会表明其制造者的国籍。显然，制作斯希普霍尔机场指示牌的民族似乎同我的民族相距甚远。一个大胆的、具有民族性格和特色的考古学家也许会将指示牌上字体的影响追溯到20世纪早期的风格派运动 [1] ，从醒目的英文副标考求出荷兰人对外来影响的开放性，进而追溯到1602年东印度公司的建立；并从指示牌整体上简单的风格看出加尔文主义的审美情趣，这种审美情趣在16世纪尼德兰联邦 [2] 和西班牙交战期间就已成为荷兰国民性的一部分。

A plug socket, a bathroom tap, a jam jar or an airport sign may tell us more than its designers intended, it may speak of the nation that made it. And the nation that had made the sign at Schiphol Airport seemed very far from my own. A bold archaeologist of national character might have traced the influence of the lettering back to the De Stijl movement of the early twentieth century, the prominence of the English subtitles to the Dutch openness towards foreign influences and the foundation of the East India Company in 1602 and the overall simplicity of the sign to the Calvinist aesthetic that became a part of Holland's identity during the war between the United Provinces and Spain in the sixteenth century.

从一个指示牌便能看出两地间巨大的差异，这正可以作为一个简单却让人愉悦的想法的注脚：一旦跨越国界，脚下便是一个不同的国度，风俗人情和生活习惯亦必大异其趣。然而仅有差异，尚不足以引发快感，即便是有了快感，也不会长久。只有那些有助于我们自己国家自我完善的差异方可引发长久的快感。我认为斯希普霍尔机场的指示牌具有异国情调，是因为它隐约传达出了一种强烈的信息：制作这个指示牌的、就在uitgang之外的国度，有可能在相当程度上比我自己的国家更投合我的性情与兴趣。这指示牌预示着我在这个国度里的快乐。

That a sign could evolve so differently in two places was evidence of a simple but pleasing idea: that countries are diverse and practices variable across borders. Yet difference alone would not have been enough to elicit pleasure, or not for long. Difference had to seem like an improvement on what my own country was capable of. If I called the Schiphol sign exotic, it was because it succeeded in suggesting, vaguely but intensely, that the country which had made it and which lay beyond the uitgang might in critical ways prove more congenial than my own to my temperament and concerns. The sign was a promise of happiness.