悠游度过一天的24小时：第九章对艺术的兴趣

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2020年02月10日

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CHAPTER IX Interest In The Arts

第九章对艺术的兴趣

Many people pursue a regular and uninterrupted course of idleness in the evenings because they think that there is no alternative to idleness but the study of literature; and they do not happen to have a taste for literature. This is a great mistake.

很多人晚间总想无所事事，一直闲着，因为他们觉得打发时间的唯一途径就是读文学作品，可他们对文学又提不起兴趣。这是一个严重的错误。

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not literary. I shall come to literature in due course.

没有纸质书籍，想要较好地学习任何东西当然不可能或是很艰难。但若你渴望了解打桥牌或操作帆船的高深技巧，你就不会因为对文学缺乏兴趣而对桥牌或帆船方面最好的书籍畏而远之了。因此我们必须区分文学书籍和非文学书籍。等该谈文学时我自然会谈及文学。

Let me now remark to those who have never read Meredith1, and who are capable of being unmoved by a discussion as to whether Mr. Stephen Phillips2 is or is not a true poet, that they are perfectly within their rights. It is not a crime not to love literature. It is not a sign of imbecility. The mandarins of literature will order out to instant execution the unfortunate individual who does not comprehend, say, the inf luence of Wordsworth3 on Tennyson4. But that is only their impudence. Where would they be, I wonder, if requested to explain the influences that went to make Tschaikowsky's "Pathetic Symphony"?

现在，对那些从未读过梅瑞狄斯的作品、对斯蒂芬.菲利普是否真正算诗人的讨论无动于衷的人，我想说他们完全有权利这样做。不喜爱文学并不是罪恶，也不是愚笨的表现。文学界的达官贵人们认为，对那些连华兹华斯对丁尼生有何影响等类事情都不知晓的可悲的人，应该立即执行死刑。然而这不过是那些官令的轻率之举。我寻思如果要这些官令解释柴可夫斯基创作《悲怆交响曲》时所受的启示，他们会怎样？

There are enormous fields of knowledge quite outside literature which will yield magnificent results to cultivators. For example (since I have just mentioned the most popular piece of high-class music in England today), I am reminded that the Promenade Concerts5 begin in August. You go to them. You smoke your cigar or cigarette (and I regret to say that you strike your matches during the soft bars of the "Lohengrin" overture), and you enjoy the music. But you say you cannot play the piano or the fiddle, or even the banjo; that you know nothing of music.

文学之外，还有广阔的知识领域可以给人以极大的教化。比如（我刚刚提到了当今英国最流行的高级音乐），我想起每逢八月开始的逍遥音乐会。你参加音乐会，一边抽着雪茄或香烟（我不得不遗憾地告诉你，当《罗恩格林》序曲的优美旋律响起时，你却划了火柴），一边陶醉在音乐中。可是你说你不会弹钢琴，不会拉小提琴，甚至连班卓琴也不会；你认为自己对音乐一窍不通。

What does that matter? That you have a genuine taste for music is proved by the fact that, in order to fill his hall with you and your peers, the conductor is obliged to provide programmes from which bad music is almost entirely excluded (a change from the old Covent Garden6 days!).

那有什么关系呢？为了使你和同伴们坐满音乐厅，乐队指挥挑选了精彩的曲目，次劣音乐完全没有立足之地（可不同于以前柯文特花园的日子！），这一事实足以证明你对音乐真正有品位。

Now surely your inability to perform "The Maiden's Prayer" on a piano need not prevent you from making yourself familiar with the construction of the orchestra to which you listen a couple of nights a week during a couple of months! As things are, you probably think of the orchestra as a heterogeneous mass of instruments producing a confused agreeable mass of sound. You do not listen for details because you have never trained your ears to listen to details.

因此现在很肯定的是，即便你不会用钢琴演奏《少女的祈祷》，也毫不妨碍你熟悉管弦乐队的结构，因为几个月来你每周花好几晚听乐队演奏。事实是，你很可能认为管弦乐队就是集中五花八门的乐器，奏出一系列混乱而又悦耳的声音。你没有注意听细节，因为你的耳朵还没受过相关训练。

If you were asked to name the instruments which play the great theme at the beginning of the C minor symphony you could not name them for your life's sake. Yet you admire the C minor symphony. It has thrilled you. It will thrill you again. You have even talked about it, in an expansive mood, to that lady—you know whom I mean. And all you can positively state about the C minor symphony is that Beethoven composed it and that it is a " jolly fine thing."

如果要你说出C小调交响曲响起时演奏主旋律的乐器名称，可能你无论如何也说不出来。但你还是很欣赏这首曲子，它让你心潮澎湃，以后还会让你感到震撼。兴致高的时候，你还同那位女士谈过这首曲子——你知道我指的是谁。对于这首曲子，你能谈论的也仅限于那是贝多芬的作品，说它是“让人身心愉悦的好曲子”。

Now, if you have read, say, Mr. Krehbiel's7 How to Listen to Music (which can be got at any bookseller's for less than the price of a stall at the Alhambra, and which contains photographs of all the orchestral instruments and plans of the arrangement of orchestras) you would next go to a promenade concert with an astonishing intensification of interest in it. Instead of a confused mass, the orchestra would appear to you as what it is—a marvellously balanced organism whose various groups of members each have a different and an indispensable function. You would spy out the instruments, and listen for their respective sounds. You would know the gulf that separates a French horn from an English horn, and you would perceive why a player of the hautboy gets higher wages than a fiddler, though the fiddle is the more difficult instrument. You would live at a promenade concert, whereas previously you had merely existed there in a state of beatific coma, like a baby gazing at a bright object.

但如果你读过，比如克雷比尔所著的《怎样听音乐》（几乎任何书店都可以买到，价格比阿罕布拉剧场的前排票价还低，还有管弦乐团所有乐器的图片以及乐队的安排方案）之后，下次去参加逍遥音乐会，你的兴味就会出奇浓厚了。你再也不会觉得管弦乐队是一堆繁杂乐器的总和，而会领略到管弦乐队真正的风采——是美妙和谐的一体，各成员各司其职，不可或缺。你能辨别各种乐器，听出各自的音色。你能领会法国号与英国管之间的巨大差异，也能明白为什么演奏高音双簧箫的人比小提琴手领到的薪水更多，尽管拉小提琴难度大些。你将切身体会音乐会的魅力，而以前你在那儿不过是像婴儿盯着一个闪亮的东西一般，沉浸在幸福的恍惚之中。

The foundations of a genuine, systematic knowledge of music might be laid. You might specialise your inquiries either on a particular form of music (such as the symphony), or on the works of a particular composer. At the end of a year of forty-eight weeks of three brief evenings each, combined with a study of programmes and attendances at concerts chosen out of your increasing knowledge, you would really know something about music, even though you were as far off as ever from jangling "The Maiden's Prayer" on the piano.

真正的、系统的音乐知识基础就这样奠定了。你可以深入了解某种形式的音乐（如交响乐），或是某位作曲家的作品。一年48个星期的时间里，每周三个晚上略抽一点时间去了解音乐，加之对节目的研究，随着相关知识的增长，选择参加一些音乐会，你就会真正懂得一些音乐的相关知识，虽然你还是跟从前一样，甚至不会用钢琴丁零当啷地敲出《少女的祈祷》。

But I hate music! you say. My dear sir, I respect you.

“但我讨厌音乐！”你说。我亲爱的先生，我尊重你的意见。

What applies to music applies to the other arts. I might mention Mr. Clermont Witt's8 How to Look at Pictures, or Mr. Russell Sturgis's9 How to Judge Architecture, as beginnings (merely beginnings) of systematic vitalising knowledge in other arts, the materials for whose study abound in London.

有关音乐的做法也适用于其他艺术形式。作为系统了解其他艺术的开始（仅仅是开始），或许我可以提及克莱蒙特.威特的《如何欣赏画作》、拉塞尔.斯特吉斯的《如何评价建筑》，这类书籍在伦敦可谓汗牛充栋。

I hate all the arts! you say. My dear sir, I respect you more and more.

“所有艺术我都讨厌！”你说。亲爱的先生，我对您越发尊重了。

I will deal with your case next, before coming to literature.

接下来我将分析你的情况，然后再谈文学。

(1)梅瑞狄斯（1828—1909)，英国维多利亚时代小说家、诗人。

(2)斯蒂芬•菲利普（1864—1915），英国著名诗人、剧作家。

(3)华兹华斯（1770—1850），英国浪漫主义诗人。

(4)丁尼生（1809—1892），英国19世纪中叶的著名诗人。

(5)逍遥音乐会，又称BBC逍遥音乐会（TheBBCProms），每年夏季定期在位于英国伦敦南肯辛顿的尔伯特音乐厅举行，为期八周。

(6)柯文特花园，此处为“柯文特花园皇家歌剧院”（CoventGardenRoyalOperaHouse）的简略说法，此剧院1732年建于英国伦敦的柯文特花园，1856年遭火灾，1858年重建。

(7)克雷比尔（1854—1923)，美国音乐评论家、音乐学家。