旅行的艺术:动机 Ⅲ 异国情调-2

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从传统意义上看，异国情调一词更多地是同耍蛇人、闺阁、光塔、骆驼、露天集市，以及由一个蓄着八字须的仆人从高处倒进托盘上小玻璃杯内的薄荷茶等等联系在一起，它们远比上面提及的荷兰指示牌丰富多彩。

The word exotic has traditionally been attached to more colourful things than Dutch signs: among them, to snake charmers, harems, minarets, camels, souks and mint tea poured from a great height into a tray of small glasses by a mustachioed servant.

19世纪上半叶，异国情调一词成了中东的代名词。1829年，维克多·雨果出版了他的组诗《东方集》。在诗序中，就有这样的表述：“我们所有的人都比以前更为关注东方。东方已然是众多人魂萦梦绕的地方，也是本书作者向往之地。”

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the term became synonymous with the Middle East. When Victor Hugo published his cycle of poems Les Orientales in 1829, he could declare in the preface, 'We are all much more concerned with the Orient than ever before. The Orient has become a subject of general preoccupation-to which the author of this book has deferred.'

雨果的诗具有欧洲东方文学的基本题材，如海盗、帕夏 [3] 、苏丹、香料和托钵僧人等。诗中的人物用小玻璃杯喝薄荷茶。像《天方夜谭》、瓦尔特·司各特 [4] 的东方题材的小说以及拜伦 [5] 的《异教徒》等文学作品一样，他的诗作很快赢得了读者的喜爱。1832年1月，尤金·德拉克洛瓦动身去北非，期冀其绘画创作能捕捉东方的异国情调。到丹吉尔后，未及3个月，他就穿起了当地的服饰，并在写给他弟弟的信尾署名为“你的：非洲人”。

Hugo's poems featured the staples of European Orientalist literature: pirates, pashas, sultans, spices, moustaches and dervishes. Characters drank mint tea from small glasses. His work found an eager audience-as did the Arabian Nights , the Oriental novels of Walter Scott and Byron's The Giaour . In January 1832, Eugène Delacroix set off for North Africa to capture the exoticism of the Orient in painting. Within three months of arriving in Tangier, he was wearing local dress and signing himself in letters to his brother as 'your African'.

更有甚者，欧洲的一些公共场所看上去也越来越具有东方情调。1833年9月14日，鲁昂附近的塞纳河畔挤满了人群，他们在为法国军舰卢索赫号欢呼。该舰从埃及亚历山大港起航，正往巴黎方向逆水上行。军舰上有一座方尖碑，用专门的支架固定着。它来自底比斯神殿，人们把它吊运到船上，准备用它作协和广场前的交通岛。

Even European public places were becoming more Oriental in appearance. On 14 September 1833, a crowd lined the banks of the Seine near Rouen and cheered as a French navy boat, the Louxor , sailed upstream to Paris on its way from Alexandria bearing, in a specially constructed hold, the giant obelisk lifted from the temple complex at Thebes, destined for a traffic island on the Place de la Concorde.

在这群人中有一位心事重重的12岁男孩，他就是古斯塔夫·福楼拜 [6] 。福楼拜的最大梦想便是离开鲁昂，到埃及去赶骆驼，并在后宫中找到一位有着橄榄肤色，上唇带着一丝幽怨的女孩，并为她献出自己的童贞。

One of those standing in the crowd was a moody twelve-year-old boy named Gustave Flaubert, whose greatest wish was to leave Rouen, become a camel driver in Egypt and lose his virginity in a harem to an olive-skinned woman with a trace of down on her upper lip.

这个12岁的男孩对鲁昂——事实上，对整个法国——充满了轻蔑。他在写给学校时的朋友舍瓦利耶的信中表示，对这所谓的“优秀文明”他只有蔑视，尽管这个文明已经制造出了“铁路、监狱、奶油馅饼、忠诚和断头台”，并以此自傲。他的生活“徒劳乏味，毫无新意，并充满艰辛”。他在日记中写道：“我常希望自己毙掉过路的行人。我太无聊了，实在是太太无聊了！”在创作中，他常常会涉及到在法国，特别是鲁昂生活的无聊。“今天我简直是无聊透顶了，”在一个糟透了的星期天行将结束时，他这样写道。“外省的景色是多么的迷人，生活在那里的人们又是多么的有趣。他们谈论的是税费、道路的修整……。‘邻居’是一个多么美妙的字眼。为了强调‘邻居’在社会生活中的重要性，它永远都应该是大写的‘邻居’（NEIGHBOUR）。”

The twelve-year-old held Rouen-and indeed the whole of Francein profound contempt. As he put it to his schoolfriend Ernest Chevalier, he had only disdain for this 'good civilization' which prided itself on having produced 'railways, poisons, cream tarts, royalty and the guillotine'. His life was 'sterile, banal and laborious'. 'Often I'd like to be able to blow the heads off passers-by,' he told his diary. 'I am bored, I am bored, I am bored.' He returned repeatedly to the theme of how boring it was to live in France and especially in Rouen. 'Today my boredom was terrible,' he reported at the end of one bad Sunday. 'How beautiful are the provinces and how chic are the comfortably off who live there. Their talk is…of taxes and road improvements. The neighbour is a wonderful institution. To be given its full social due, his position should always be written in capitals: NEIGHBOUR.'

就福楼拜而言，对东方的凝视能帮助他从自己的生活环境中解脱出来，暂时将那种富足却委琐的生活以及世俗的思维定势抛于脑后。对中东的描写充斥于他早期的创作和通信。1836年，他才15岁（他还在学校学习，但一直幻想如何刺杀鲁昂市长），便创作了小说《愤怒与无助》。福楼拜通过小说的主人公欧姆林先生表现出了他对东方的幻想和渴望：“啊，东方！东方热辣的太阳，东方澄碧的蓝天，东方金色的光塔……还有那跋涉在沙漠之上的骆驼商旅；啊，东方！……东方有着棕褐橄榄般肤色的女人！”

It was as a source of relief from the prosperous pettiness and civic-mindedness of his surroundings that Flaubert contemplated the Orient. References to the Middle East pervaded his early writings and correspondence. In Rage et impuissance , a story written in 1836 when he was fifteen (he was at school and fantasized about killing the mayor of Rouen), the author projected his Eastern fantasies on to his central character, Monsieur Ohmlin, who longed for: 'The Orient with her burning sun, her blue skies, her golden minarets … her caravans through the sands; the Orient! … the tanned, olive skin of Asiatic women!'

1839年（福楼拜当时正迷上拉伯雷[7] 的作品，并想很大声地放屁，让整个鲁昂的人都能听见），他创作了另一部作品《一个愚者的回忆录》，小说带有自传色彩，其主人公在回顾年轻时对中东的向往时有这样的描述：“我梦想着穿越南方大片的土地，到遥远的地方旅行；在梦想中，我看见了东方，她有一望无垠的沙漠、宫殿，宫殿里满是挂着铜铃的骆驼……我还看见了蓝色的大海，碧澄的天，银色的细沙和有着棕褐色皮肤的女人，她们眼里射出热辣的火，她们和我交谈时有着天国美女的温柔。”

In 1839 (Flaubert was reading Rabelais and wanted to fart loudly enough for all Rouen to hear), he wrote another story, Les Mémoires d'un fou , whose autobiographical hero looked back on a youth spent yearning for the Middle East: 'I dreamt of faraway journeys through the lands of the South; I saw the Orient, her vast sands and her palaces teeming with camels wearing brass bells … I saw blue seas, a pure sky, silvery sand and women with tanned skin and fiery eyes who could whisper to me in the language of the Houris.'

1841年（福楼拜已经离开鲁昂，遵从父亲的意愿在巴黎学习法律），他又完成了小说《十一月》。小说的主人公成天将自己想象成东方的商人，无暇关注铁路、资产阶级的文明和律师：“啊！骑在驼背上！前方，是红艳的天空，棕褐色的沙漠；在燃烧的地平线上，是起伏的沙丘，延伸到无穷的远方……夜幕降临，人们搭起帐篷，给骆驼喝水，生起篝火以驱走胡狼，但耳边还是能够听到在沙漠深处胡狼凄厉的嗷叫；到了早上，人们在绿洲给葫芦灌满水。”

Two years later (by which time Flaubert had left Rouen and was studying law in Paris, in deference to his father's wishes), he wrote another story, Novembre , whose hero had no time for railways, bourgeois civilization or lawyers-but identified with the traders of the East instead: 'Oh! To be riding now on the back of a camel! Ahead of you, a red sky and brown sands, on the burning horizon, the undulating landscape stretches out into infinity … In the evening, one puts up the tents, waters the dromedaries and lights fires to scare off the jackals that one can hear wailing far off in the desert; and in the morning, one fills the gourds at the oasis.'

在福楼拜看来，幸福和东方是可以互换的两个词。有一段时期，学业的压力，失恋的打击，父母的期望，以及一直可以听到农民抱怨的糟糕透顶的天气（连续两周不停歇的雨水冲没了鲁昂附近的田地，还淹死了几头牛），这一切都让福楼拜感到绝望。他在写给舍瓦利耶的信中说：“尽管我梦想的生活是如此美好，充满诗意，是如此的广阔，为爱所包围，但现实中，我的生活将会和别人一样，单调，愚蠢，中规中矩。我将到法学院念书，然后取得律师资格，最终在外省的某个小镇，如伊沃托或迪耶普，当上一名受人尊敬的地区助理律师……可怜的快要发疯的年轻人，还在梦想着荣耀、爱情、桂冠、旅行和东方！”

In Flaubert's mind, the word happiness became interchangeable with the word Orient . In a moment of despair over his studies, his lack of romantic success, the expectations of his parents, the weather and the accompanying complaints of farmers (it had been raining for two weeks and several cows had drowned in flooded fields near Rouen), Flaubert wrote to Chevalier, 'My life, which I dream will be so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love, will turn out to be like everyone else's-monotonous, sensible, stupid. I'll attend law school, be admitted to the bar, and end up as a respectable assistant district attorney in a small provincial town, such as Yvetot or Dieppe … Poor madman, who dreamt of glory, love, laurels, journeys, the Orient.'

那些生活在北非沿海地区、沙特阿拉伯、埃及、巴勒斯坦和叙利亚的人们可能不曾料到，他们栖身的土地，在一位年轻的法国人眼里竟然是一切美好事物的朦胧化身。这位年轻人惊叹道：“万岁，太阳！万岁，橘树、棕榈树、莲花！还有那铺着大理石的凉亭，凉亭里有用木板隔成的小间，专供坠入情网的年轻人谈情说爱！……我是否永远看不到那古城里的墓群，在那里，薄暮时分，有成群的骆驼靠着墓穴憩息，还能听到地底下墓穴里国王们的木乃伊旁狼狗的嚎叫？”

The people who lived along the coasts of North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Palestine and Syria might have been surprised to learn that their lands had been grouped by a young Frenchman into a vague synonym for all that was good. 'Long live the sun, long live orange trees, palm trees, lotus flowers and cool pavilions paved in marble with wood-panelled chambers that talk of love!' he exclaimed. 'Will I never see necropolises where, towards evening, when the camels have come to rest by their wells, hyenas howl from beneath the mummies of kings?'

他能够实现他的梦想，因为25岁时，父亲突然辞世，留给他一笔财产，使他得以摆脱那似乎早已命定的小资产者的生活，从此不必听那些关于淹死的牛的无聊抱怨。他立即着手安排一次埃及之旅，参与他的计划的还有坎普，他的好友，也是同学，和他一样对东方充满激情，并愿意将此种激情付诸实践，踏上通向东方的旅程。

As it happened, he would, for when Gustave was twentyfour, his father died unexpectedly, leaving him a fortune that allowed him to side-step the bourgeois career and attendant small-talk about drowned cattle he had seemed destined for. He began at once to plan an Egyptian trip, assisted in the task by his friend Maxime du Camp, a fellow student who shared his passion for the East and combined it with the practical turn of mind that was a necessary requirement for anyone wishing to undertake a journey there.

两位东方迷1849年10月底离开巴黎，从马赛上船，经历了海上惊涛骇浪的颠簸后，于11月中旬抵达亚历山大。“船再过两个小时就要到埃及的海岸了。我们随军需官到了船头，可以看见阿拔斯王朝帕夏的宫殿，从蔚蓝的地中海望去，它像是一个黑色的圆穹，”福楼拜在给母亲的信中写道。“太阳正从它的穹顶下落。我便是透过，或者说正是在这像是熔化在海面上的银色辉光里得获我对东方的第一眼印象。不久海岸变得清晰起来，最早看见的是岸上的两只骆驼，它们的主人牵着它们；随后，看见的是码头上一些安然垂钓的阿拉伯人。在一片震耳欲聋的喧嚣声中我们开始上岸了：你左右都能听到黑人男人的声音，黑人女人的声音，骆驼的叫声，缠着头巾的人的声音，棒喝的声音，还有粗嗄刺耳的喊叫声，总之，你能想象多闹便有多闹。还有那众多的色彩，我像大啖稻草的驴子般，狼吞虎咽着眼前的五光十色。”

The two Oriental enthusiasts left Paris at the end of October 1849 and, after a stormy sea crossing from Marseilles, arrived in Alexandria in the middle of November. 'When we were two hours out from the coast of Egypt I went into the bow with the chief quartermaster and saw the seraglio of Abbas Pasha like a black dome on the blue of the Mediterranean,' Flaubert reported to his mother. 'The sun was beating down on it. I had my first sight of the Orient through, or rather in, a glowing light that was like melted silver on the sea. Soon the shore became distinguishable, and the first thing we saw on land was a pair of camels led by their driver; then, on the dock, some Arabs peacefully fishing. Landing took place amid the most deafening uproar imaginable: negroes, negresses, camels, turbans, cudgellings to right and left, and ear-splitting guttural cries. I gulped down a whole bellyful of colours, like a donkey filling himself with hay.'