旅行的艺术:Ⅳ 好奇心-9

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洪堡的兴奋证明了向这个世界提出恰当问题的重要性。因为由此我们可以看出，讨厌苍蝇与不辞辛劳攀登高峰以研究地理和植物，这两者之间的天壤之别。

Humboldt's excitement testifies to the importance of having the right question to ask of the world. It may mean the difference between irritation with a fly and a run down the mountain to begin work on an Essai sur la géographie des plantes.

然而不幸的是，多数的景物不会让游客产生质疑，他们也因此失去了他们应得的刺激和情趣。这些景物往往平淡无奇，不给人任何联想；即便偶尔给人联想，这种联想也只是错误的联想。在交通阻塞频繁的圣弗朗西斯科大街的街尾，是圣弗朗西斯科大公教堂，和它相关联的东西太多了，但是却丝毫未能引发我的好奇。

Unfortunately for the traveller, most objects don't come affixed with the question that will generate the excitement they deserve. There is usually nothing fixed to them at all, or if there is it tends to be the wrong thing. There was a lot fixed to the Iglesia de San Francisco El Grande, which stood at the end of the long traffic-choked Carrera de San Francisco-but it hardly helped me to be curious about it.

除了建于18世纪的圣安东尼和圣柏纳蒂诺小教堂外，教堂墙上和天花板上都饰有19世纪的湿壁画和其他画作。北侧的第一座小教堂是圣柏纳蒂诺小教堂，其墙壁的中央画的是：来自喜耶纳的圣柏纳蒂诺，在阿拉贡王面前传教之情景。这幅画的作者为年轻时的戈雅 [16] 。在教堂圣器收藏室和牧师会礼堂内摆设的16世纪靠背座椅，来自宝拉尔修道院，这是一个靠近塞哥维亚的加尔都西会修道院。

The walls and ceilings of the church are decorated with 19C frescoes and paintings except those in the chapels of saints Anthony and Bernadino which date from the 18C. The Capilla de San Bernardino, the first chapel on the north side, contains in the centre of the wall a St Bernardino of Siena preaching before the King of Aragon (1781), painted by Goya as a young man. The 16C stalls in the sacristy and chapter-house come from the Cartuja de El Paular, the Carthusian monastery near Segovia.

我们未能从这份资料中寻找到足以引起好奇感的任何线索，正如同洪堡在山上见到的苍蝇一样，事实资料本身是不会说话的。如果一位游客会对“教堂墙上和天花板上都饰有19世纪的湿壁画和其他画作”产生亲切感（而不是因心虚而屈从），他必定能够把乏味如苍蝇一样的事实资料与大问题联系起来，这也正是其好奇心的落脚处。

The information gave no hint as to how curiosity might arise. It was as mute as the fly on Humboldt's mountain. If a traveller was to feel personally involved with (rather than guiltily obedient towards) the 'walls and ceilings of the church … decorated with 19C frescoes and paintings ', he would have to be able to connect these facts-as boring as a fly-to one of the large, blunt questions to which genuine curiosity must be anchored.

对于洪堡而言，关键的问题是：“为什么大自然会出现地域性的差异？”而站在圣弗朗西斯科大公教堂前面的人，心中想到的问题则可能是：“为什么人们觉得有必要建教堂？”或者甚至会问道：“为什么我们崇拜上帝？”这样天真的问题可能引发一连串的好奇和进一步的质疑，例如：“为什么各处的教堂都不一样？”“教堂的主要建筑风格是什么？”“教堂的主要建筑师是谁？他们为何取得成功？”惟有经历好奇心的漫长演化，看到莎巴提尼设计的具新古典形式外观的大教堂，才会觉得欣喜，而不会陷入无聊、沮丧。

For Humboldt, the question had been, 'Why are there regional variations in nature?' For the person standing before the Iglesia de San Francisco El Grande, a question might be, 'Why have people felt the need to build churches?' or even, 'Why do we worship God?' From such a naïve starting point, a chain of curiosity would have the chance to grow, involving questions like, 'Why are churches different in different places?', 'What have been the main styles of churches?' and 'Who were the main architects and why did they achieve success?' Only through such a slow evolution of curiosity could a traveller stand a chance of greeting the news that the church's vast neo-classical façade was by Sabatini with anything other than boredom or despair.

旅行的一个危险是，我们还没有积累和具备所需要的接受能力就迫不及待地去观光，而造成时机错误。正如缺乏一条链子将珠子串成项链一样，我们所接纳的新讯息会变得毫无价值，并且散乱无章。

A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.

出自洪堡的《赤道地区的地理与植物》和庞普兰德的《安地斯山地区图解》，1799—1803年

圣弗朗西斯科大公教堂

这种危险因为地理原因而进一步加剧。同座城市中的建筑物或纪念碑可能不过咫尺之遥，然而鉴赏它们所需具备的能力却有天渊之别。我们到一个或许不再重游的地方观光，觉得自己有必要接二连三地观赏一系列景物，然而这些景物，除了地理位置相近，别无其他联系可言。实际上，要求人们对各个景物都有适当的了解是非常困难的，因为不同的鉴赏能力是很难在同一个人身上找到的。我们受到感召，对一条街上的哥特式建筑风格产生兴趣，接着我们的注意力又得迅速转向伊特鲁斯坎的古物。

The risk is compounded by geography: the way that cities contain buildings or monuments that are only a few feet apart in space, but leagues apart in terms of what would be required to appreciate them. Having made a journey to a place we may never revisit, we feel obliged to admire a sequence of things without any connection to one another besides a geographic one, a proper understanding of which would require qualities unlikely to be found in the same person. We are asked to be curious about Gothic architecture on one street and then promptly Etruscan archaeology on the next.

到马德里观光的游客不得不对皇家宫殿产生兴趣。这座18世纪的皇族居所因为其奢华的洛可可中国风格 [17] 宫室而闻名，它出自那不勒斯设计师加斯帕里尼之手。然而不到一会儿，我们的视线又不得不转向苏菲娅王后艺术中心，这座用石灰粉饰的建筑专门收藏20世纪的艺术作品，镇馆之宝是毕加索的画作《古尔尼卡》。然而，照情理看，一位想对18世纪皇家建筑风格有更深层了解的游客在观赏皇家宫殿后，应该前往布拉格或圣彼得堡的宫殿参观，而不是美术馆。

The visitor to Madrid is asked to be interested in both the Palacio Real, an eighteenth-century royal residence famed for its chambers decorated with lavish rococo chinoiserie by the Neapolitan designer Gasparini, and-a few moments later-the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, a whitewashed gallery devoted to twentieth-century art, whose highlight is Picasso's Guernica . Yet the natural progression for someone deepening their appreciation of eighteenth-century royal architecture would be to ignore the gallery and head for the royal palaces of Prague and St Petersburg instead.

旅游因为表面的地理逻辑扭曲了我们的好奇心，这好比大学课程的指定教科书只看其厚度，而不问其主题一样。

Travel twists our curiosity according to a superficial geographical logic, as superficial as if a university course were to prescribe books according to their size rather than subject matter.