旅行的艺术:Ⅳ 好奇心-6

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我坐在普罗文西亚广场的咖啡厅，承认自己不可能再有什么新的发现。我的旅游指南上的一段文字更加强了这一点：

Sitting in a café on the Plaza Provincia, I acknowledged the impossibility of new factual discoveries. My guidebook enforced the point with a lecture:

圣弗朗西斯科大公教堂的新古典式格局为莎巴提尼 [13] 所规划，但该建筑物本身，包括一个圆形主教堂和衔接的6个小礼拜堂，则是由卡贝萨斯所设计。该座建筑有一个宽33米或108英尺的圆形盖顶。

The neo-classical façade of the Iglesia de San Francisco El Grande is by Sabatini but the building itself, a circular edifice with six radial chapels and a large dome 33m/108ft wide, is by Francisco Cabezas.

评判我所学的任何东西，都应以它是否让我受益为准则，而不是考虑它是否满足他人的利益。我对事物的发现应该让我更具活力：它们必须以某种方式使我“生命升华”。

Anything I learnt would have to be justified by private benefit rather than by the interest of others. My discoveries would have to enliven me: they would have in some way to prove 'lifeenhancing'.

这个术语是尼采[14] 所提出的。他在1873年的秋季写了一篇文章，他对探险家或学者们的论据收集以及运用已知论据丰富内在精神这二者进行辨析。和一般大学教授不同的是，他对前一项活动不屑一顾，对后者却褒赞有加。在这篇名为《历史对于生命的用途和损害》的文章中，尼采一开始便非同凡响地声明：以类似科学的方法收集论据是徒劳无功的。真正的挑战在于运用这些数据来升华我们的“生活”。他引用歌德的一句话说：“我厌恶所有那些只提供指示，却未能丰富或鼓动我活动的东西。”

The term was Nietzsche's. In the autumn of 1873, Friedrich Nietzsche composed an essay in which he distinguished between collecting facts like an explorer or academic and using already well-known facts for the sake of inner, psychological enrichment. Unusually for a university professor, he denigrated the former activity and praised the latter. Entitling his essay On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life , Nietzsche began with the extraordinary assertion that collecting facts in a quasiscientific way was a sterile pursuit. The real challenge was to use facts to enhance 'life'. He quoted a sentence from Goethe: 'I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.'

“为了丰富生命”而从旅行中获取知识意味着什么？尼采提供了一些建议。他想象有这么一个人，对德国文化的现状和任何尝试改善它的办法皆感到沮丧。这个人到了意大利的一座城市，比如锡耶纳或佛罗伦萨，竟发现广为人知的“意大利文艺复兴”，只不过肇因于几个意大利人之努力。他们凭着运气、毅力和恰当的赞助人，使整个社会风尚和价值取向得以变更。这位德国旅客学会从他人的文化中寻找“曾经在过去充实‘人’的概念并使它更完善的东西”。尼采还说道：“历史中总是一次又一次地出现一些对过往的伟大事物进行反思的人，他们从中获取力量，深深感受到人类生命的辉煌灿烂。”

What would it mean to seek knowledge 'for life' from one's travels? Nietzsche offered suggestions. He imagined a person depressed about the state of German culture and the lack of any attempt to improve it, going to an Italian city, Siena or Florence, and there discovering that the phenomenon broadly known as 'the Italian Renaissance' had in fact been the work of only a few individuals who, with luck, perseverance and the right patrons, had been able to shift the mood and values of a whole society. This tourist would learn to seek in other cultures 'that which in the past was able to expand the concept “man” and make it more beautiful'. 'Again and again there awaken some who, gaining strength through reflecting on past greatness, are inspired by the feeling that the life of man is a glorious thing.'

尼采提供了第二种旅行方式的建议：通过历史了解我们的社会和身份认同如何形成，从而得到一份延续性和归属感。进行此类旅行的人“超越了个人的短暂生命并感觉到自己是他寓所、种族和城市的灵魂”。他能够凝视着古老的建筑并体验到“一份快乐，即他知道自己的存在并非完全偶然或任意的，而是过去的继承者和成果。因此，一个人的存在是合理的，且确有其存在的意义”。

Nietzsche suggested a second kind of tourism, whereby we may learn how our societies and identities have been formed by the past and so acquire a sense of continuity and belonging. The person practising this kind of tourism 'looks beyond his own individual transitory existence and feels himself to be the spirit of his house, his race, his city'. He can gaze at old buildings and feel 'the happiness of knowing that one is not wholly accidental and arbitrary but grown out of a past as its heir, flower and fruit, and that one's existence is thus excused and, indeed, justified'.

按尼采的说法，观察一栋古建筑的意义不过在于思考到这一点：“建筑物的风格比原本以为的更加灵活。”我们可能凝望着圣克鲁斯宫（“它建于1629至1643年间，为哈普斯堡式建筑风格的珍品”），心中想：“如果当时能够把它建出，为何现在不能？”这样，我们从旅行中带回来的，或许就不是1600种新植物，而是一系列细微、不显著但却能丰富人生的想法。

To follow the Nietzschean line, the point of looking at an old building might be nothing more, but then again nothing less, than recognizing that 'architectural styles are more flexible than they seem, as are the uses for which buildings are made'. We might look at the Palacio de Santa Cruz ('constructed between 1629 and 1643, this building is one of the jewels of Habsburg architecture' ) and think, 'If it was possible then, why not something similar now?' Instead of bringing back 1,600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small, unfêted but life-enhancing thoughts.