旅行的艺术:风景 Ⅴ 乡村与城市-3

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威廉·华兹华斯1770年生于“湖区”北方边缘的一个小镇——科克茅斯。他自称“童年中有一半的时光是在山野中奔跑嬉戏”。他生命的大部分时间在“湖区”度过，但也间断地在伦敦和剑桥住过，并且到过欧洲旅行。他最早住在格拉斯米尔村庄里一栋简朴的两层楼房里，房子用石头砌成，名为“鸽舍”。后来他渐渐有了名声后，便搬到附近的赖德尔，住进了较为充裕的寓所。

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the small town of Cockermouth, on the northern edge of the Lake District. He spent, in his words, 'half his boyhood in running wild among the Mountains' and, aside from interludes in London and Cambridge and travels around Europe, lived his whole life in the Lake District: first in a modest two-storeyed stone dwelling, Dove Cottage, in the village of Grasmere, and then, as his fame increased, in a more substantial home in nearby Rydal.

他几乎每天都要在山间或湖畔步行一段很长的距离。即使是下起雨来他也并不在乎。他坦言落在湖区的雨“有一股气势和韧劲，让失意的旅人想到了落在阿比西尼亚山区、成为尼罗河终年源头的豪雨”。华兹华斯的友人托马斯·德奎恩斯估计，诗人一生中走了175000至180000英里的路程。德奎恩斯认为基于华兹华斯的体格，这是非常难得的。他说：“华兹华斯的身体并不算强健。所有我知道的女士腿评专家，都一致尖酸刻薄地嘲讽华兹华斯这方面的缺陷。”德奎恩斯认为更遗憾的是：“当他行走时，华兹华斯的姿势很糟糕。根据很多乡下人的说法，‘他走起路来十足像一只大谷盗虫。’那是一种斜着行走的昆虫。”

And almost every day, he went on a long walk in the mountains or along the lakeshores. He was unbothered by the rain, which, as he admitted, tended to fall in the Lake District 'with a vigour and perseverance that may remind the disappointed traveller of those deluges of rain which fall among the Abyssinian mountains for the annual supply of the Nile'. His acquaintance Thomas de Quincey estimated that Wordsworth had walked 175,000 to 180,000 miles in his life-all the more remarkable, added De Quincey, given his physique: 'For Wordsworth was, upon the whole, not a well-made man. His legs were pointedly condemned by all the female connoisseurs in legs that I ever heard lecture upon the topic.' Sadly, continued De Quincey, 'the total effect of Wordsworth's person was always worst in a state of motion, for, according to the remark I have heard from many country people, “he walked like a cade”-a cade being some sort of insect which advances by an oblique motion'.

在别人眼中如此别扭的行走，却给诗人带来了灵感，成就了他关于大自然的诗作，如《致蝴蝶》、《致布谷鸟》、《致云雀》、《致雏菊》和《致小小的白屈菜》。以前，诗人不过是很随意或习惯性地看待自然现象，但是它们在华兹华斯笔下却成了最伟大的主题。根据华兹华斯的妹妹多萝茜的日记（这本日记记录了华兹华斯在湖区的活动）记载，华兹华斯1802年3月16日这天在帕特代尔溪谷附近一个湖畔散步。这个湖叫做“兄弟湖”，湖面非常平静。他走过湖上一座桥，便坐下来写了以下的诗句：

It was during his cadeish walks that Wordsworth derived the inspiration for many of his poems, including To a Butterfly, To the Cuckoo, To a Skylark, To the Daisy and To the Small Celandine -poems about natural phenomena which poets had hitherto looked at casually or ritualistically, but which Wordsworth now declared to be the noblest subjects of his craft. On 16 March 1802-according to the journal of his sister Dorothy, a record of her sibling's movements around the Lake District-Wordsworth walked across a bridge at Brothers Water, a placid lake near Patterdale, then sat down to write the following:

公鸡啼鸣

The cock is crowing

小溪流淌

The stream is flowing

小鸟啁啾，

The small birds twitter,

湖水闪耀着波光……

The lake doth glitter …

山林中充满快乐

There's joy in the mountains；

喷泉中充满活力

There's life in the fountains;

云儿飘荡

Small clouds are sailing,

天空属于蔚蓝

Blue sky prevailing

过了几个星期，诗人被美丽的雀巢所感动，于是又提笔写道：

A few weeks afterwards, the poet found himself moved to write by the beauty of a sparrow's nest:

瞧，五颗蓝色的蛋正在那里闪烁！

Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!

这么简单的画面

Few visions have I seen more fair,

却少有景象比它悦目，

Nor many prospects of delight

也少有盼望的喜悦

More pleasing than that simple sight!

比它更令人神往！

几年后的一个夏天，他听见夜莺的鸣唱，又觉得有必要把心中的喜悦表达出来，于是写了以下诗句：

A need to express joy that he experienced again a few summers later on hearing the sound of a nightingale:

夜莺啊！你美丽的歌吟

O Nightingale! thou surely art

必定出自一颗炽热的心——

A creature of a fiery heart

你唱得如此嘹亮

Thou sing'st as if the god of wine

仿佛酒神

Had help'd thee to a Valentine.

已为你找到了情人

这些诗句并不是偶发的喜悦之声。它们背后有一套完善的自然哲学理论。这套哲学具有独创性，阐述了获得幸福的条件以及我们不幸福的缘由。它贯穿华兹华斯的所有作品，并且在西方思想中有着相当的影响。诗人解释说，大自然中的各种现象，包括小鸟、小溪、水仙和绵羊，都是不可或缺的，因为它们能矫正和治疗城市人倍感困顿的心灵。

They were not haphazard articulations of pleasure. Behind them lay a well-developed philosophy of nature, which-infusing all of Wordsworth's work-made an original and, in the history of Western thought, hugely influential claim about our requirements for happiness and the origins of our unhappiness. The poet proposed that Nature, which he took to comprise, among other elements, birds, streams, daffodils and sheep, was an indispensable corrective to the psychological damage inflicted by life in the city.

华兹华斯的主张一开始便遭受到可怕的阻力。拜伦1807年为华兹华斯《诗歌二卷》所作的评论中提到，他对于一个成年人把花儿或动物看得那么高贵感到困惑。他说：“幼儿园的读者对于这样矫饰、浮华的作品会怎么看哪？……难道是为模仿吟游诗人，以缓解摇篮里婴儿的啼哭吗？”《爱丁堡评论》语调同情地断言华兹华斯的诗歌是“幼稚、荒谬之作品”，并怀疑或许是诗人本身想刻意让自己成为笑柄。《爱丁堡评论》指出：“一把铲子或一个雀巢或许真的能给华兹华斯留下一系列深刻的印象……然而可以肯定的是，这样的联想在大多数人看来似乎是被迫、生硬和不自然的。所有世人都取笑以下的作品：《挽歌·致吃奶的小猪》、《洗衣日圣歌》、《献给老奶奶的十四行诗》、《醋栗派颂》。但是，要让华兹华斯先生相信这一点却是非常困难的。”

The message met with vicious initial resistance. Lord Byron, reviewing Wordsworth's Poems in Two Volumes in 1807, was bewildered at how a grown man could make such claims on behalf of flowers and animals. 'What will any reader out of the nursery say to such namby-pamby … an imitation of such minstrelsy as soothed our cries in the cradle?' The Edinburgh Review sympathized, declaring Wordsworth's poetry 'a piece of babyish absurdity', and wondered whether it was not a deliberate attempt by the author to turn himself into a laughing stock. 'It is possible that the sight of a garden spade or a sparrow's nest might really have suggested to Wordsworth a train of powerful impressions … but it is certain that to most minds, such associations will always appear forced, strained and unnatural. All the world laughs at Elegiac stanzas to a Sucking-pig, A Hymn on Washing-day, Sonnets to one's Grandmother, or Pindaric odes on Gooseberry-pie; and yet, it seems, it is not easy to convince Mr Wordsworth of this.'

许多文学刊物中开始出现嘲仿华兹华斯此种风格的拙作：
Parodies of the poet's work began to circulate in the literary journals:

When I see a cloud,

一朵云

I think out loud,

让我的心

How lovely it is,

赞叹，这样的蓝天

To see the sky like this

真惹人爱怜

ran one.

又如：

Was it a robin that I saw?

我看见的是知更鸟吗？

Was it a pigeon or a daw?

还是鸽子或穴鸟？

ran another.

然而华兹华斯却丝毫不为之动摇。他奉劝博蒙特夫人“不要因为这些诗歌目前受到的评论而烦恼”。他解释说：“这个时刻与它们将来能发挥使命时相比算得了什么？我相信我的诗歌之使命便是安慰受苦者；使开心的人更加快乐，好让白天的阳光更明媚；教导年幼者及各年龄层有仁爱之心的人学会真正的观察、思考和感受，让他们在行动和心灵上更有德性。这就是它们的职责，我相信在我们作古多年后，它们仍会忠实地完成这个使命。”

Wordsworth was stoic. 'Trouble not yourself upon the present reception of these poems,' he advised Lady Beaumont. 'Of what moment is that when compared with what I trust is their destiny, to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous; this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves.'

他惟一的错是在时间判断上。德奎恩斯解释：“1820年以前，华兹华斯的名声被践踏。1820至1830年期间，褒贬互见；到了1830至1835年，胜利降临了。”人们的品位经历了缓慢却鲜明的转变。读者群逐渐停止嘲讽，他们开始欣赏、甚至背诵这些关于蝴蝶或白屈菜的赞歌。游客们因为受华兹华斯诗作的感染而来到他获取灵感的地方观光。于是，温德米尔、赖德尔及格拉斯米尔开始出现新的旅馆。到了1845年，前来“湖区”观光的游客估计比这里的绵羊还多。他们在位于赖德尔的华兹华斯庭院里瞥见诗人的影子，并且在诗人描述过的山坡和湖畔寻找自然界的力量。当骚塞 [3] 于1843年辞世时，华兹华斯被授予桂冠诗人的荣誉。一批追随者甚至筹划将“湖区”命名为华兹华斯郡。

He was wrong only about how long it would take. 'Up to 1820, the name of Wordsworth was trampled under foot,' explained De Quincey, 'from 1820 to 1830 it was militant; and from 1830 to 1835 it has been triumphant.' Taste underwent a slow but radical transformation. The reading public gradually ceased guffawing and learnt to be charmed and even recite by heart hymns to butterflies and sonnets on celandines. Wordsworth's poetry attracted tourists to the places that had inspired it. New hotels were opened in Windermere, Rydal and Grasmere. By 1845, it was estimated that there were more tourists in the Lake District than sheep. They prized glimpses of the cadeish creature in his garden in Rydal, and on hillsides and lakeshores sought out the sites whose power he had described in verse. On the death of Southey in 1843, Wordsworth was appointed Poet Laureate. Plans were drawn up by a group of well-wishers in London to have the Lake District renamed Wordsworthshire.

当80高龄的华兹华斯1850年与世长辞时（这时英格兰和威尔士有半数的人口过着都市生活），许多严肃的评论大都倾向于认同华兹华斯的看法，赞同他的这个立场：时常走访大自然是解除城市生活中罪恶的必要良方。

By the time of the poet's death at the age of eighty in 1850 (by which year half of the population of England and Wales was urban), serious critical opinion seemed almost universally sympathetic to his suggestion that regular travel through nature was a necessary antidote to the evils of the city.