旅行的艺术:风景 Ⅴ 乡村与城市-7

7

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我和M无法在湖区久留。我们在这里待了3天，然后就坐上了回伦敦的火车。坐在我们对面的男士不断使用手提电话，但好像总也找不到要找的人。火车开过许多田园和工业城镇，这段时间里，我们通过他的许多交谈了解到他正在寻找一位叫吉姆的人，因为吉姆欠了他的钱。

M and I were unable to stay long in the Lake District. Three days after our arrival, we were back on the London train, seated opposite a man who was making calls on his mobile phone in a vain search, the carriage learnt during conversations extending across many fields and industrial cities, for someone called Jim who owed him money.

即使是我们承认能从与大自然的接触中获益不浅，我们却仍可能因为接触它的时间短暂而受限制。用3天的时间沉浸在大自然中所得到的精神抚慰，未必能持续超过几个小时。

Even if we allow how beneficial contact with nature might be, its influence must surely be limited by its brevity. Three days in nature can scarcely be expected to work a psychological effect lasting longer than a few hours.

然而，华兹华斯却没那么悲观。在1790年的秋天，诗人踏上了阿尔卑斯山之旅。他从日内瓦起步，前往杰莫利谷，然后穿过辛普朗山口，再从贡多溪谷往下走，抵达马焦雷湖。他在写给妹妹的一封信中描绘了目睹的景观：“此刻，当眼前的景物浮现在我脑海时，我带着非常愉快的心境仔细思考着，今后每一天，只要忆及这些印象，我便能从中感受到快乐。”

Wordsworth was less pessimistic. In the autumn of 1790, the poet went on a walking tour of the Alps. He travelled from Geneva to the Vale of Chamouni, then crossed the Simplon pass and descended through the ravine of Gondo to Lake Maggiore. In a letter to his sister describing what he had seen, he wrote: 'At this moment when many of these landscapes are floating before my mind, I feel a high enjoyment in reflecting that perhaps scarce a day of my life ［my italics］ will pass in which I shall not derive some happiness from these images.'

这里并没有夸张的成分。几十年后，阿尔卑斯山的景象还存活在他的心中，并且一旦唤起便重新带给他一股力量。这些景象的复活使他信心十足地表示：我们在大自然中所见到的景象可能永远留在我们一生的记忆中，每当它们进入我们的意识中，便能与我们眼前困境形成对比，给予我们慰藉。他称这些自然界的体验为“凝固的时间点”。

This was no hyperbole. Decades later, the Alps continued to live within him and strengthened him whenever he evoked them. Their survival in memory led him to argue that we may witness in nature certain scenes that stay with us throughout our lives and, every time they enter consciousness, can offer us a contrast to, and relief from, present difficulties. He termed such experiences in nature 'spots of time'.

在我们的生命中有若干个凝固的时间点

There are in our existence spots of time,

卓越超群、瑰伟壮丽

That with distinct pre-eminence retain

让我们在困顿之时为之一振

A renovating virtue …

并且弥漫于我们全身，让我们不断爬升

That penetrates, enables us to mount,

当我们身居高处时，激发我们爬得更高

When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

当我们摔倒时，又鼓舞我们重新站起

This belief in small, critical moments in nature explains Wordsworth's unusually specific way of subtitling many of his poems. For example, the subtitle of Tintern Abbey, On revisiting the banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798, cites the exact day, month and year to suggest that a few moments in the countryside overlooking a valley could number among the most significant and useful of one's life, and be as worthy of precise remembrance as a birthday or a wedding.

对于自然界中这些细小却关键的时刻的信念，使我们了解了华兹华斯在为诗作定副题时的用意：如《廷特恩修道院》的副题为“1798年7月13日重访瓦伊河畔之作”。具体的年、月和日的记载，透露了在乡间遥望河谷的那些瞬间，或许就是生命中最重的一刻，让人获益良多，所以值得像生日或结婚纪念日那样铭记在心。

I too was granted a 'spot of time'. It occurred in the late afternoon on the second day of the visit to the Lake District. M and I were sitting on a bench near Ambleside eating chocolate bars. We had exchanged a few words about the chocolate bars we preferred. M said she liked caramel-filled ones, I expressed a greater interest in dry biscuity ones, then we fell silent and I looked out across a field to a clump of trees by a stream. There were a host of different colours in the trees, sharp gradations of green, like someone had fanned out samples from a colour chart. These trees gave off an impression of astonishing health and exuberance. They seemed not to care that the world was old and often sad. I was tempted to bury my face in them so as to be restored by their smell. It seemed extraordinary that nature could on its own, without any concern for the happiness of two people eating chocolate on a bench, have come up with a scene so utterly suited to a human sense of beauty and proportion.

我也体验过“凝固的时间点”。它发生在我拜访湖区的第二天傍晚。我和M在安布赛德附近的一张长凳上坐着吃巧克力条。我们对所喜爱的巧克力条交换了意见。M说她喜欢里面有焦糖的，而我却偏爱干硬、饼干味较浓的。接着，我们静了下来。我的目光停留在小溪旁田野上的树林。树的颜色不一，呈现不同色度的绿，仿佛是有人从调色板上取下的样本。这些树给人一种特别健康、充满活力的印象。它们似乎并不在乎这个世界是否老旧或悲哀。我很想把脸埋在树林中，好让它们散发的芳香帮助我恢复元气。自然界不在乎两个在长凳上吃巧克力的人快乐与否，只是自行地呈现一个那么符合人类审美条件的景观，这的确神奇非凡。

My receptivity to the scene lasted only a minute. Thoughts of work then intruded and M suggested we return to the inn so that she could make a phone call. I was unaware of having fixed the scene in memory, until one mid-afternoon in London, while waiting in a traffic jam, oppressed by cares, the trees came back to me, pushing aside a raft of meetings and unanswered correspondence, and asserting themselves in consciousness. I was carried away from the traffic and the crowds and returned to trees whose names I didn't know, but which I could see as clearly as if they stood before me. These trees provided a ledge against which I could rest my thoughts, they protected me from the eddies of anxiety and, in a small way that afternoon, contributed a reason to be alive.

我的注意力停留在这个景观上仅1分钟的时间，过后便被工作的思绪打乱，M也建议我们回旅馆，因为她想打电话。我并未意识到这个景象已印在我脑海里，直到有一天下午，我困在伦敦的交通阻塞中，心烦焦虑，突然那片树林的景象又涌现了出来，将那些排得满满的会议和未答复的信件都一一撇开了。我的思绪被带离了繁忙的交通和拥挤的人群，回到了那些我叫不出名字、却非常清晰可见的树木面前。这些树木成了我思绪得以休息的避风港，它们保护着我，使我免于陷入焦虑的漩涡，并且在那个下午给了我一小部分生存的理由。

At eleven in the morning on 15 April 1802, Wordsworth saw some daffodils along the western shore of Ullswater lake, a few miles north of where M and I had stayed. There were some 10,000 of these flowers 'dancing in the breeze', he wrote. The waves of the lake seemed to dance beside them too, though the daffodils 'outdid the sparkling waves in glee'. 'What wealth the shew to me had brought,' he explained of a moment that became a spot of time:

1802年4月15日，上午11点，华兹华斯在阿尔斯沃特湖西岸发现了一些水仙花。这个湖位于我们居所以北的地方，相距几英里。在他的描绘中，近万朵水仙花“在风中婆娑起舞”，湖中的涟漪似乎也在伴舞，然而水仙“舞姿轻盈快活，比那晶莹的湖水还要更胜一筹”。他说：“这场演出给我带来如此多的财富。”这一刻也因此成为凝固的时间点：

For oft when on my couch I lie

常常，我在卧榻上躺着

In vacant or in pensive mood,

内心空虚或忧虑。

They flash upon that inward eye

突然，我的心灵之眼

… And then my heart with pleasure fills,

……显现奇观，顿时充满欢愉

And dances with the Daffodils.

与那些水仙一同飞舞

An unfortunate last line perhaps, open to Byronic accusations of being 'namby-pamby', but nevertheless offering the consoling idea that in vacant or pensive moods, in traffic in the city's 'turbulent world', we may also draw on images of our travels through nature, images of a group of trees or a spread of daffodils on the shores of a lake, and with their help blunt a little the forces of 'enmity and low desires'.

诗中最后一行或许不幸落入了拜伦所指责的“矫揉造作”范围之中，但是它却提供了令人慰藉的理念：我们或处于空虚、焦虑的思绪中，或在“动荡的世界”里、城市的交通阻塞中穿梭，但都能够借助旅行中所见的自然景象，如一片树林或湖畔的几朵水仙花，来缓解我们一些“怨恨和卑劣欲望”。

On Travelling in the Lake District, 1418 September 2000

2002年9月14至18日湖区之旅有感