旅行的艺术:回归 Ⅸ 习惯-4

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不幸的是，德·梅伊斯特开拓性的旅行方式，就像他的飞行器，并没有更深更远的影响。

Unfortunately, De Maistre's own pioneering journey, rather like his flying machine, did not fly very far.

故事的开始部分很不错。德·梅伊斯特锁上门，换上他的粉红色和蓝色相间的睡衣裤。没有了行李的累赘，他径直走向沙发，这是房间里最大的家具。他的旅行已经将他从惯常的无精打采中唤醒，他以旅人之眼注视沙发，并重新发现了它的一些特质。他赞叹它高雅的支脚，回想起他偎依在靠垫上的愉快时光，幻想着他一生中的爱情和事业上的晋升。他从沙发的角度打量自己的床，又一次从一名旅行者（观看事物）的角度出发，学会了欣赏这件复杂的家具。他为自己在床上度过的香甜夜晚感到感激，而他的床单和睡衣几乎总是搭配得很好，这也让他感到骄傲。“我建议每一个人如果可以的话，让他自己换上粉红的睡衣和白色的床单，”他写道，因为这些色调能给容易惊醒的人带来宁静和愉悦的幻想。

The story begins well. De Maistre locks his door and changes into his pink and blue pyjamas. Without the need for luggage, he travels to the sofa, the largest piece of furniture in the room. His journey having shaken him from his usual lethargy, he looks at it through fresh eyes and rediscovers some of its qualities. He admires the elegance of its feet and remembers the pleasant hours he has spent cradled in its cushions, dreaming of love and advancement in his career. From his sofa, De Maistre spies his bed. Once again, from a traveller's vantage point, he learns to appreciate this complex piece of furniture. He feels grateful for the nights he has spent in it and takes pride that his sheets almost match his pyjamas. 'I advise every man who can to get himself pink and white bedlinen,' he writes, for these are colours to induce calm and pleasant reveries in the fragile sleeper.

但是，德·梅伊斯特接下来的描述则有可能被指为偏离了主旨。他开始陷入冗长的题外话，他开始谈他的狗，罗西尼；他的爱人，珍尼；和他忠实的仆人，约安那提。对室内旅行的独特之处深感兴趣的读者这时可能会把书合上，并觉得有点被背叛的感觉。

But thereafter De Maistre may be accused of losing sight of the overall purpose of his endeavour. He becomes mired in long and wearing digressions about his dog, Rosinne, his sweetheart, Jenny, and his faithful servant, Joannetti. Travellers in search of a specific report on room-travel risk closing Journey around My Bedroom feeling a little betrayed.

然而，德·梅伊斯特的作品来源于一种深厚而具有暗示性的洞察力：即我们从旅行中获取的乐趣或许更多地取决于我们旅行时的心境，而不是我们旅行的目的地本身。如果我们可以将一种游山玩水的心境带入我们自己的居所，那么我们或许会发现，这些地方的有趣程度不亚于洪堡的南美之旅中所经过的高山和蝴蝶漫舞的丛林。

And yet De Maistre's work springs from a profound and suggestive insight: that the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to. If only we could apply a travelling mindset to our own locales, we might find these places becoming no less interesting than the high mountain passes and butterfly-filled jungles of Humboldt's South America.

那么，什么是旅行的心境？感受力或许是它最主要的特征。我们怀着谦卑的态度接近新的地方。对于什么是有趣的东西，我们不带任何成见。我们也许会让当地人感到不解。因为我们在马路上或狭窄的街道上，欣赏那些他们认为有些奇怪的小细节。我们冒着被车辆撞倒的危险是因为我们为一座政府建筑的屋顶或是刻在墙上的题字所吸引。我们发觉一间超市或是理发店不同寻常地迷人。我们用很长的时间思索着一份菜单的设计或是晚间新闻里主持人的服装。我们敏锐地感觉到被覆盖于现今之下的层层历史，并记笔记和拍照。

What, then, is a travelling mindset? Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. We approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas about what is interesting. We irritate locals because we stand on traffic islands and in narrow streets and admire what they take to be strange small details. We risk getting run over because we are intrigued by the roof of a government building or an inscription on a wall. We find a supermarket or hairdresser's unusually fascinating. We dwell at length on the layout of a menu or the clothes of the presenters on the evening news. We are alive to the layers of history beneath the present and take notes and photographs.

作者的卧室

另一方面，家，使我们在期待中更能觉到安定感。由于在那里居住了很长一段时间，我们确信这附近不再会有什么有趣的东西。我们无法想象，在一个我们已经居住了10年或者更长时间的地方，还能发现什么新的东西。因为我们早已习惯了一切，因而对其视若无睹。

Home, on the other hand, finds us more settled in our expectations. We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about a neighbourhood, primarily by virtue of having lived there a long time. It seems inconceivable that there could be anything new to find in a place which we have been living in for a decade or more. We have become habituated and therefore blind.

德·梅伊斯特试图将我们从被动状态中唤醒。在他关于室内旅行的第二部作品《卧室夜游》中，他走到窗前，抬头凝望夜空。天空的美景让他感触良多，为什么以前不懂得欣赏这样的寻常景色：“现今能从这宏伟的景致中感到快乐的人真是太少了！天空对于困倦的人们来说毫无意义！对于那些出来散步或是挤出剧场的人群来说，抬头望一会儿，赞叹在他们头顶闪烁的星群，会让他们损失什么呢？”一般没有这样做的原因是因为他们从前从未这样做过。大家都习惯了，认为这个世界本来就很无聊——于是，生活正如他们所预期的一样无趣。

De Maistre tried to shake us from our passivity. In his second volume of room-travel, Nocturnal Expedition around My Bedroom , he went to his window and looked up at the night sky. Its beauty made him frustrated that such ordinary scenes were not more generally appreciated: 'How few people are right now taking delight in this sublime spectacle which the sky lays on uselessly for dozing humanity! What would it cost those who are out for a walk or crowding out of the theatre, to look up for a moment and admire the brilliant constellations which gleam above their heads?' The reason they weren't looking was that they had never done so before. They had fallen into the habit of considering their universe to be boring-and it had duly fallen into line with their expectations.