现代英文选评：Dialogues of A. N. Whitehead 怀德海语录

Dialogues of A. N. Whitehead 怀德海语录

Lucien Price (1883—1964)

怀德海（Alfred North Whitehead）是当代大哲学家，1861年生于英国，出身剑桥大学，早享盛名，1924年受美国哈佛大学之聘，任教十余年之久，1937年退休，1947年逝世。怀氏生前喜与青年朋友交谈，青年人聆其教诲者，自然增长智慧，然而怀氏虚怀若谷，认为和青年人谈论，亦大有助于他自己的思想。他曾经说过：“It is all nonsense to suppose that the old cannot learn from the young.”

Lucien Price是《波士顿环球报》（The Boston Globe）的记者，亦是好学深思之士，他从1932年起经常访问怀德海，讨论学术思想、人生各种问题。后来他把讨论的话，随时笔录，二十余年来，居然成一本厚书。Price自云对于记录谈话，有特殊训练，非但谈话要旨，可以保持不失，连谈话时所用语句，都可以照式录下。他的记录，大部分曾经怀氏寓目，认为无误。怀氏态度诚恳，吐属隽雅，思想深刻，学识渊博，他的“语录”，可以和Boswell的《约翰生博士传》以及Eckermann的《歌德语录》相比。

Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead 1954年由Little, Brown图书公司出版。

Suppose our American culture were wiped out: whom have we produced so far who would stand as a lasting contribution to the world?

Walt Whitman.

Not Emerson?

I read Emerson a good deal when I was younger, but if my good neighbours, the Forbeses, will pardon me for saying so (they are grandsons of Emerson), he was not so original. But Whitman brought something into poetry which was never there before. Much of what he says is so new that he even had to invent a new form for saying it. Whitman seems to me to have been one of the very few great poets that have ever lived. He can stand easily beside the really great European poets.

● 本篇一开头所引各段都是由原书《第一次对话》（April 6, 1934）中录下，讨论内容大部分有关英美文化。

● our American culture：问话的人（Price）是美国人。were：虚拟式动词。wiped out：扫除，消灭。

● whom是疑问代名词；who是关系代名词，代替whom。到今天为止（so far），美国到底出了什么人才，可以算对全世界是一个永久的贡献呢？stand：别的东西都消灭了，他可以屹立不移。

● Whitman（1819—1892）：美国诗人，《草叶集》的作者。Emerson（1803—1882）：美国诗人，思想家。

● the Forbeses：怀德海的邻居Forbes一家人。Forbes指的是Cameron Forbes，美国外交家，曾任美国驻日大使，驻菲律宾总督。他和Emerson的血统关系不详。grandson解作“孙儿”，也可解作“外孙”。

● pardon：批评人家的祖先，当然应该请人家原谅，即使他们人不在左右，听不见我的话。not so original：没有什么独创的贡献。

● brought something：这两个简单的字，用处很大。something在本书前文中已经讨论过，这里可能代表一种“美”、或“力量”、或“风格”、或“思想”。brought可能表示“灌输”、“创造”、“倡导”种种意思。这两个字都可以用比较艰深专门的字代替，但是在普通谈话中，这样也就够用了。which was never there before：以前所没有的。定语从句，形容something。

● what he says：他所说的（内容）。what的用法，在本书前文中曾讨论过。is so new的主语是Much。saying it的it代替Much。form：（诗歌的）形式。这句话用两种不同的时态：he says用现在式，话虽说过了，但是话还留传人间；古人说话，大多可用现在式以表示之，例如Confucius says。又is so new也用现在式，对于今日的读者，还是新鲜的。had to invent用过去式，Whitman创造新形式以表现新思想，是在过去。

● seems to me to have been：分词用完成式，表示Whitman现在已不在人世。

● can stand easily beside：足与（欧洲大诗人）相比。

You must remember that at Winchester the boys are a selected group, with a very special kind of training to which they are well adapted. In that groove they acquire astonishing proficiency, but they would be quite ignorant out of it. They would know a great deal about Roman customs in the period of the Punic Wars, but very little, perhaps nothing, about urgent problems of their own land and time. They do well at the universities and make names in the professions and as colonial administrators and civil servants. The creative arts? I do not think you will find many of them excelling there. They write very well, but not very imaginatively. American students are less well-informed but more eager to learn; English boys are less eager but more informed. The American boy knows less about what interests him more, the English boy knows more about what seems to interest him less. He said this with a laughing twinkling in his bright blue eyes.

● 本段怀德海讨论英美两国青年的知识程度。Price曾去参观英国有名的Winchester College（中学），发现高班中学生都能阅读希腊名著的原文，可是美国哈佛大学的学生都不一定有这样高的程度。怀德海即就此点发表意见。

● selected group：经过挑选的一群人，优秀分子。adapted连前面的to which。这辈青年很能适应于这种训练。

● groove：原意为“沟”或“槽”，转作“故辙”、“规定的路子”、“刻板文章”。这里指英国中学的训练方法。proficiency：精通、熟练。是动词acquire（获得）的宾语。would be：虚拟式动词，说话的人不敢说定。out of it=out of the groove。在规定课程范围之内，他们知道得非常之多；在这范围之外，他们的知识可能很浅陋。

● Roman customs：罗马人的风俗习惯。Punic Wars：罗马与迦太基之战。（Punic就是腓尼基，迦太基是腓尼基人所建立的）。urgent problems：迫切的问题。他们对于本国目前的大问题，可能知道得很少，甚至一无所知。

● do well：成绩很好。make names：扬名，露头角。excelling：出人头地。他们干律师、医生、牧师等（所谓professions）行业，到殖民地去做官，或者在本国做公务员（civil servants），成绩都很好，但是他们在创造性的艺术方面，却很少有人能有杰出的成绩。

● They write very well：训练严格，故写作技巧很好；但思想可能窒塞，想象力不够活泼。eager to learn：求知欲旺盛。informed：学识丰富。less…more：美国学生对于学问（what）所知不多，但是兴趣较浓。

● twinkling：闪光。

It strikes me that our writers don't know enough.

It is true that most great writers did know quite a lot. But it is possible to know too much. What is wanted is an immense feeling for things. And the danger in old civilizations is that the teaching may be too good. It damps students down. They know too much about what has been done, they write well, but without freshness. It is so fatally easy for a good period in art to die in scholasticism and pedantry, for the life to go out of it. Oxford has taught the classics for centuries, and for centuries Cambridge virtually refused to teach literature and taught mathematics, and yet twice as many poets came out of Cambridge as out of Oxford.

● our writers：美国作家。这一段又是Price发问。

● did know：过去式，did用以加重语气。过去大作家学识的确是丰富的。

● to know too much：若从充实学识着手，可能中了书毒，对于艺术创作反有妨害。

● an immense feeling for things：学识并不重要，重要的是对于万事万物，有一种极大的“体会的能力”。

● old civilizations：civilizations可以解作“国家”。在文明古国，教书先生过分道地，这是有危险的。

● damps：使潮湿；挫折学生的锐气，打消学生的热诚。

● what has been done：前人的作品。

● scholasticism：（中世纪的）烦琐哲学。对于枝节问题，不惮辞费地讨论不休。pedantry：卖弄学问，掉书袋子。这两种现象，都是“遗神取貌，买椟还珠”，有害于艺术创作。一个艺术上有成就的时代，假如发生了这种现象，它的生命就算完结了。

● fatally easy：非常容易，因此也是非常之不幸。本句结构仿照下列形式：It is easy for (someone) to do (something)。本句前后两节：前节是for a period to die，后节是for the life to go out of it，末一个it代表period。

● virtually：事实上（虽不一定如此，也相差不远）。Cambridge：剑桥大学教育不以文学为主，反而诗人辈出。剑桥出身的大诗人有Spenser，Milton，Wordsworth，Coleridge，Tennyson等；人数比牛津出身的多一倍（twice as many）。

How about the possibility of one or two great artists exhausting an epoch or an art-form? The Renaissance takes a drop after Michelangelo, and grand opera since Wagner has been a 'Tristan, Junior'.

That does happen. Such figures come at the end of an epoch. The danger is when the great themes have been superlatively well done, and the later workers come to secondary themes or refinements or niceties, and art or thought gets down off into shallows. That is fatally easy. I mean such themes as a mother's love for her child, something so universal that to express it sounds trite, and yet the medieval sculptors and Renaissance painters could express it with unbelievable beauty: but it is no good trying to imitate them.

● exhausting：用尽，汲干。一两个大艺术家可以把一个时代（epoch）的才气吸干；或者使用某一种艺术形式（art-form），达到尽美的境地，使后人难以企及。这种艺术形式就算给“用绝”了。

● Michelangelo（1475—1564）：意大利画家、雕刻家、文学家、科学家。他是文艺复兴时代的大师，他死以后，文艺复兴稍呈衰状（takes a drop）。

● grand opera：纯正歌剧。Wagner以后，纯正歌剧即少伟大作品，只有轻松歌剧（light opera）点缀门面。“Tristan, Junior”照字面上讲应该是“Tristan之子”，出典不详。Wagner的名著为Tristan und Isolde，“Tristan之子”应该比不上Tristan的。

● figures：人物。

● great themes：艺术上重要的题目（如母爱，下文有举例）。superlatively well：好得无以复加。done：（艺术）制作。later workers：以后的艺术工作者，自忖比不上过去的大师，只好挑次要的题目来发挥。refinements or niceties：这两个字都解作“精致”，纤巧而不雄壮，注重小节而忽略精神。（中国诗词的没落，所走的似乎也是这个路子。）

● gets down off into shallows：驶入浅水，不复有海阔天空的雄风矣。

● something：同位语，就是“母爱”。universal：人人皆知，四海皆有的。如母爱之类的题目，再要用来作为艺术题材，未免使人觉得（sounds）是陈腐（trite）了。

● medieval sculptors：中世纪的雕刻家。他们以及文艺复兴时代画家大致喜欢用“圣母和圣婴”作为题材。

● it is no good中的it代表trying…。模仿那些大师们是没有用的。他们把母爱表现得如是之好，叫以后的艺术家如何下手呢？

There had been another wartime commencement, and the College Yard, where I crossed it, was being cleared of scaffold timber, which had been put up for the out-of-door ceremonies. The grass plot looked trodden into hard ground. Academic Cambridge, like any other academic town out of term-time, seemed suddenly deserted.

● 此段开始录自原书1943年6月10日那次谈话。commencement：大学的毕业典礼（这里是指哈佛大学的）。another：珍珠港事变以来，在战争中举行毕业典礼已经不是一次了。There had been：毕业典礼已经举行过。

● College Yard：哈佛大学部门众多，其大学本科部分称为Harvard College。Yard是校园，别的美国大学大多用Campus一字，哈佛则称Yard。College Yard就是哈佛的“校本部”的原有校园。

● where I crossed it：我所走过的地方。别的地方未必如此。was being cleared：正在清理卸除。用中文来写，“工人”、“木匠”这种主语大约是省不掉的，英文的被动句法就比较简单了。timber：木材。scaffold：木架，台。put up：架设。ceremonies：毕业典礼是在户外举行的，临时要搭一座台，事过后拆除。

● plot：一片地。trodden：过去分词作形容词用。毕业典礼参加的人很多，草坪看来都好像践踏成一块硬地了。

● Academic Cambridge：剑桥（哈佛所在地）的学术地区。academic town：大学城。拥有一所大学的小城。out of term-time：学期终了之后，假期。deserted：人都走完了。

It was a loury evening with rain in brew and a rising wind. The Whiteheads were alone and seemed more than usual at their ease. In no time at all we were out beyond the harbour jetties and into the conversational open water. It was about the gap between written and spoken language, between literature and vernacular.

● loury：阴沉沉的。in brew：这个成语和中文“酝酿中”是巧合，brew原意是“酿”。a rising wind：风正起。

● The Whiteheads：他们这一家人。alone：没有客人。（“我走到他们家里……”这种话是不必说的；这是文章经济之法。）at their ease：优游自得。平常本来如此，今天晚上益见闲散。

● In no time：很快地。at all用以加强no。harbour jetties：港口边上的码头。conversational open water：码头种种，都是“暗喻”。谈话未开始时，好像船未启碇；开始之后，立刻畅谈无阻，好像驶入汪洋大海。

● gap：歧异。vernacular：白话，口语。这个字通常作形容词用：口语的。

It is quite unlikely, said Whitehead, "that Cicero spoke to his friends in the language of his letters, to say nothing of his orations."

A slave population complicates it, too, Mrs. Whitehead added. "No matter how vivid or picturesque the vernacular may be, if it is used by a servile class it is avoided by the educated."

● Cicero（160—43 B.C.）是拉丁文文章大家。他的文章流传于世，他的谈话失传。据怀德海看来，Cicero的谈话，不大可能（quite unlikely）像他书札一样的文绉绉的。因为谈话用的是白话，书札可能用的是文言。至于Cicero的演说稿，那更是句法整齐，音调铿锵，和平常谈话差别之大，那更不必说了（to say nothing of…）。

● a slave population：罗马社会中的奴隶阶级。这使得问题（it）更为复杂。不论白话是多么的生动（vivid）如画（picturesque），不过它既为贩夫走卒（servile class：贱役阶级）所用，就为士大夫所不取了。

I said that the gap seemed particularly wide in English.

Not so wide as you might think, said he. "The London poorer classes, for example, have an extraordinary appreciation for Shakespeare. His language doesn't put them off at all: their sense of humour is about the same as his; they think the things are funny. All this is not surprising for they were the sort of people for whom the plays were originally written. There is a school of technology in the East End for which I used to be on the visiting committee, and I saw a good deal of it. One evening a teacher was going over a page of literature in a textbook with his class, and asked the meaning of an unusual seventeenth-century word. One of the young men answered correctly. He was asked how he happened to know. 'I saw a play of Shakespeare's (he named the one) at the Old Vic last Thursday night, and that word was used in it in the same sense as here.'"

● particularly wide：拉丁文文言、白话之间既有如此差别，英文的文言、白话之间的差别似乎尤其大。gap原意是“空隙，裂痕”，形容它的“大”，应该用wide。

● 怀德海的意思：差别没有此君所想象那样的大。莎士比亚在今日读来，总算是“文”的了，但是伦敦比较贫苦的人（因此受教育不多），对于莎士比亚，特别能欣赏。

● put off有“阻止”之意。莎翁的文字并不能把他们“推开”。

● sense of humour：幽默感。莎翁剧本里不乏下流的俏皮话和低级趣味的滑稽场面（但这无损莎翁的价值，此处不讨论），他的幽默感和伦敦中下社会的幽默感大致类似（about the same）。

● the things：莎翁剧本里的滑稽的东西。他们认为这些东西的确是滑稽的。这一切并不奇怪，因为莎翁剧本本来是为这辈人而写的。

● school of technology：工业职业学校。East End：伦敦的东区，居民类率为中下社会之人，与上流社会所居之西区（West End）不同。

● visiting committee：监督委员会。委员经常到校视察（visit），监督校务。任委员之职，可说：on the committee。saw a good deal of it：关于学校情形，我所见甚多。

● an unusual seventeenth-century word：文学教本里，一个冷僻的、十七世纪的古字。

● happened：照这班学生的程度，这种古字他们不该认得的，怎么这个学生“碰巧会”认得呢?

● he named the one：莎翁那部剧本的名字，那个学生是说出来的。但是怀氏在这里并没有复述。the Old Vic：伦敦剧院名，以演莎翁剧著名。英国电影明星，出身Old Vic剧院者，颇不乏人。

● that word：莎翁死于1616年，他所用的字，十七世纪诗文中常常可以见到。那个学生虽然读书无多，但是看了莎翁的戏，居然把戏里的生字都能记得，到课堂上来应用，足见莎翁剧本之深入人心。

If I may say a good word for American slang, said I, "it is that, besides being fresh and vigorous, it is almost always sweet and clean, pure animal high spirits."

That is true, he assented, "and very much to your people's credit."

● 他们又讨论到美国俚语（slang）的问题。作者是美国人，他要替美国俚语说一句好话，但是怀氏夫妇是英国人，对于美国的东西未必赞成，所以作者先请他们原谅：“假如容许我……的话。”这种谦逊的态度，是一个受过高尚教育的人应有的风度。一般学习英语会话的人，即使能够说得口若悬河、舌生莲花，假如风度不够，仍旧没有学到家也。

● it is that的that是连接词，引起下面的名词性从句。照作者看来，美国俚语除了新鲜有劲之外，差不多都是清洁而可爱（前面他们刚讨论过，法国的俚语常隐含一种恶俗的意义：French slang generally has a nasty innuendo behind it），只是纯粹表示一种生命的活力。animal high spirits：天生的兴高采烈。high spirits：兴致高，起劲。

● to your people's credit：是贵国人民的光荣。credit解作“好名誉”，to one's credit（此人博得别人的称赞）是成语。

● 讲起美国俚语，1957年2月18日的Time杂志有一段讨论文字，颇有趣。英国一位Lord Conesford爵爷对于“美国英文”大肆攻击，他认为美国人把face，meet，check这三个简单的动词，累赘地说成face up to，meet up with，check up on是不足为训的。还有几个“美国字”，也是要不得的：如underprivileged（贫穷），hospitalized（住医院），alibi（借口），bi-partisan（共和、民主两党联合一致的）等。但是这些都算是美国的正式英文，对于美国slang，这位爵爷倒颇表首肯。他认为俚语常常都是“雄健可喜”（virile and admirable）的。他举的例子：

bulldozer：声威逼人、欺凌弱小之人，开路机。

blurb：大事吹擂的广告或声明。

debunk：揭破流行的谬说。

这些字并非正式英文，然而这些字如用正式英文的字眼来代替，读起来就没有俚语那样“有劲”了。

Dialogue, as actually spoken, seldom goes into print effectively unless something has been done to it—often quite a little. It must sound the way people talk, but if you try setting down their talk verbatim, you may find that it doesn't seem as life-like as it ought.

Art, said Whitehead, "is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern. The mistake is to think of words as entities. They depend for their force, and also for their meaning, on emotional associations and historic overtones, and derive much of their effect from the impact of the whole passage in which they occur."

● 现在讨论的题目是小说中的对白。前一段恐怕是作者说的，他认为对白真照口头所说那样地印在书里（goes into print），读起来效果是不大会好的（seldom…effectively）。如要效果好，作者必须要加工改造（原文是被动句法），通常要稍花点功夫改写。

● 对白一定要读起来像（sound）真人说话那样（这一句按语法分析起来，people talk前面也许该有in which二字，但照实际用法这两个字是用不着的）。

● setting down：记下来。verbatim（副词）：一字不易地。照人家的说话，照式录下，读起来总该（ought）像真人说话了吧？事实可并不如此。

● 第二段怀氏发表他的艺术思想。他说：艺术者，是在经验上面加上（imposing）一种形式。以做诗为例，我们喜怒哀乐的情感，可以说是一种经验；诗的长短、字句的排列、平仄的安排就是形式（pattern）。单有经验，不成艺术，一定要把形式套上去，才是艺术。

● aesthetic enjoyment：审美的快感。我们读到一首好诗，觉得很快乐；这种快感是美丽的文字给我们的，我们就在对于形式之美的认识里面（in recognition of the pattern），得到快乐（enjoyment之后，省了个动词is）。

● The mistake：通常人都犯的错误，是把文字当作“独立存在的东西”（entities：这是个哲学名词，也许另外有个更好的译法）。事实上，文字所以有力量（force），所以有意义（meaning），是有赖于情感的联想（如“家”这个字可以唤起我们很多的联想）和自古相传的暗示的意义（如“雪”这个字便有很多附属意义，overtones=additional meaning）。

● 再则单字本身效果也不强，字必须见于（occur）整段诗文（the whole passage）之中，才有动人的力量；整段诗文给我们一种刺激（impact：打击）。单字的效果，大部分是从这种整个的刺激中得来（derive）的。